Seven
Nadine barely had time to think about Brent’s offer, because she went straight from the café to a chaotic newsroom dealing with reports of a potential police standoff with a domestic terrorist north of Saskatoon. Luckily, they’d been able to disarm the man, and the newsroom went off to write stories that weren’t about mass murder.
Raj in particular looked vastly relieved. “They told me for large-scale tragedies, I’m part of the advance team,” he whispered to her. “I wanted to be in the sports department, for God’s sake. I thought they’d pay me to go to games . Did anyone in the world grow up wanting to do this? I want to meet the kid who told their parents their dream was to run the obituary section instead of being an astronaut.” He paused. “Never mind. I don’t want to meet that kid at all.”
By hour six of her shift, everyone but the cleaning staff had left, and Nadine had worked through enough of her tasks to feel she deserved a break. Pulling up Dot Voline’s obituary, she read it over again. The woman was right. It was dreary, and so far nothing she’d learned of Voline was dull. That was the Herald ’s standard model, though, as set out by the previous editor, then continued by Nadine and Raj.
She closed the file, feeling as if she’d failed Dot Voline twice. First by running it when she was alive, second by allowing this memorial to carry none of her personality.
When Nadine had taken the obit job, she’d been too caught up in her own problems to do much research into what it would entail. Since she’d been tossed in with almost no training, she’d focused on reading the Herald ’s archive to get a sense of what was expected. It had taken her time to figure out the hierarchy and processes of obituary options, from the death notices, usually paid for by families and run through the advertising department, to the editorial obituaries undertaken by Nadine and her freelancers if the deceased had enough public significance. Could she have done more while she was editor? Possibly, but it was too late now. Raj wouldn’t be impressed if she stuck her nose back in.
With a faint feeling of regret, Nadine decided it was time for coffee. The motion-activated lights clicked on with a disturbing crackle as she strolled through the rows of empty desks.
She wished her career had started back in the days of typewriters and telex machines, when the office combined a lively mix of chatter and the noise of work. Even on busy days—and those were rare as so many people worked from home—the Herald retained the faint sense of a monastery, with soft typing and low-voiced conversations taking place through headsets. Most people wore gigantic headphones. Apparently the travel editor, who saved his expansive commentary for his stories and did his best to avoid conversation with his colleagues, had found mushrooms growing in his ears from wearing earbuds too often.
The place was one zombie away from being a horror movie, and she was almost grateful to arrive in the kitchen unbitten. She collected the various pods for a vanilla spice latte and devoted the necessary time cajoling the machine into making actual coffee instead of simply sputtering out coffee-adjacent hot water. Then she opened her texts. Her mother’s daily check in was easily dealt with, and so was Lisanne’s brief mention of a new lead for her super awesome huge project.
The next one was from Wes. How did he get her number? Scrolling up, she saw the last message was from almost a decade ago, organizing a location to meet for one of their school assignments. She hadn’t known her phone kept texts for that long.
She slapped the coffee machine to get it brewing again and reread Wes’s note. We should set some ground rules before the weekend.
Before they’d left Brent, the three had negotiated a time for their first meeting with Dot Voline and had settled on Sunday, since it was the only day Nadine and Wes had off in common. It had immediately become the thing Nadine was most looking forward to in the world.
Nadine considered Wes’s text. She wasn’t opposed to ground rules but felt a faint flare of irritation that she hadn’t taken the initiative in setting them. Regardless of what Wes thought, this story was rightfully hers. She was the lead.
Like telling someone you were just about to call them, it was too transparent an attempt to save face if she replied with I was going to talk to you about that . Instead she wrote back, What kind of rules?
Rules of engagement , Wes typed.
Like combatants in a war?
If that’s how you see it. I prefer to think of it as starting together in harmony.
She glared at the screen, feeling as if he’d bested her by being a better and less suspicious person, although he’d been the one to suggest limits in the first place. She didn’t trust him either, but at least she had reason to. He was snaky, as he’d proven all the times he’d gotten the better of her. Intellectually, she understood it was part of the job, but that didn’t make the impact of seeing his name on a story she’d considered hers any easier. Trusting Wes with Dot Voline would be like a frog trusting a scorpion. It was every reporter for themselves.
I propose that neither of us is allowed to contact Voline or her nephew alone , he continued.
She couldn’t let him think he was ahead of her. That was on my list too , she lied. I also want us to keep all information we find in a central location.
Wes immediately sent a link to a shared document, and she took an aggressive sip of coffee that would have burned her mouth if the machine heated anything past lukewarm. He had a doc. She should have had a doc ready. Wes was winning. Unbearable. She usually worked harder to beat Wes when he was around, but they hadn’t been intersecting as often with his job in Lifestyle. She had to get her edge back.
Another question came before she could retaliate by one-upping him. Does the Herald know you’re doing this?
Nadine hesitated. The Herald wouldn’t be pleased if they found out she’d been acting on her own. She could lie, but she had a feeling he knew the answer. It would be easier to be straight from the beginning as well as give the impression that she was confident in what she was doing.
No. Does the Spear?
Wes’s answer came right away. No.
Are you going to tell them? That was the question, wasn’t it? If Wes told his editor, Nadine would be under pressure to tell her own, just in case word got out she was involved.
Like before, the message was short. No . Another came through. At least not if you don’t. Will you?
Not planning to , she wrote back.
Then my next ground rule is that neither of us can go to our editors without a discussion on what we’re doing with the story.
This was reasonable but… Do we need to agree with the other person? Like, if I want to run what we have and you say no, what happens?
We don’t go ahead until we figure out how to do it fairly. Deal?
It made sense. Deal.
She sent the text with a little thrill to know they were secretly working together. Then she shook her head. God, she needed to get out more if she considered working with Wes exciting.
***
He was officially involved in a covert investigation with Nadine Barbault.
Sitting on his bed, Wes listened to the sound of his mother grumbling at the TV from the living room. Ma wanted to make it clear that although she wanted to talk, she was very specifically refusing to talk to him, although he came straight from the café to fix the dripping tap. He tried pinching his earlobes to reduce the headache that threatened. No go.
He waited.
Three, two, one.
There it was. The guilt. It was the last stage in the cycle of doing his best to please her, failing, and losing patience. If he tried harder to be a good son, perhaps she’d be less…he hesitated over the word, but his sister Amy’s dry voice supplied it in his head. Miserable?
He winced away. His mother had told him countless times over the years that he was the man of the house since his father went back to Singapore when Ella was a baby. He barely remembered his father, except for the smell of his Irish Spring soap. He hated it, although he didn’t hate his father. On bad days, he understood why his father had simply walked out the door and never looked back. He wished he could himself.
On other days, he thought about his sisters and pitied his father for what he was missing.
A new message came. See you Sunday. Then Nadine was gone. Wes stared at the phone for a few more seconds, wishing she was there to talk to about Dot before he came to his senses. Nadine was his competition and only temporarily his collaborator. The fact that they’d had a relatively civil interaction meant nothing. He pulled out his copy of Thirty Pieces of Silver and started taking notes.
Politician James Walton wearing a sand-and-brown-spotted tie. Like a hyena? Opportunistic backstabber from the beginning or terrible 1970s fashion?
He had reached the scene where Walton’s mother says he’ll never fill his famous father’s shoes—Dot had written it with a pathos that made him feel for Walton even as he was disgusted at his arrogant entitlement—when he received a text from Caleb. I’m in town for the weekend. You free Friday for drinks?
It would be good to see Caleb, who was in Calgary for a long-term project for his management company. Wes alternated his Fridays with Amy so one of them was always available to keep their mother company as she watched TV, and this was his week off. Amy insisted an adult woman didn’t need her grown children at her beck and call, but she was a good sister and watched three hours of a Turkish soap opera every second week to give Wes a break.
He set a place and time to meet Caleb, and got back to work on Thirty Pieces of Silver . Four hours later, when he pulled up their shared document, it was to find Nadine had entered tabs for the book as well as Voline’s other works. He clicked on Thirty Pieces of Silver .
Her first note was Hyena tie. Get list of disgraced politicians from 1950 to 1988 (publication date). One might be Walton.
Goddamn Nadine, always one step ahead.
Then he pasted in the list he’d generated of every publicly embarrassed politician at the federal and provincial level from 1950 to 1988.
Check and mate.