Stay Tuned (24 page)

The steam rose from our coffee cups as Chris and I sat on the porch early Saturday and watched the street come alive with sounds and light. Birds chirped and played on the lawn. I should have been tired. Exhausted. I was wide-awake.

Chris seemed lost in his own thoughts. He stood and walked over to the sidewalk to pick up the
Wall Street Journal
and
Telegraph
. But when he came back, instead of opening the
Journal
and getting buried in the day’s news, he set both down next to his feet.

All at once, the tears came. Hot and wet, coursing down my cheeks in rivulets. I needed a bucket to catch them all. Chris knelt down next to my chair, wiping away the wetness from my face with both hands. He let me cry it out.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said finally. “What can I do to make it better?”

I sniffled and tried to stop sobbing. “You can’t do anything,” I replied. “Everything’s a mess. My mother doesn’t know me. You’ve got to decide about your work. I have to talk to Drew about my job at the station.” I stopped.

Chris stood and pulled his chair closer to mine. He took my hand in his and squeezed it. “It is too much for any one person to handle. But we can do it. Together.”

Something in the sound of his voice made me want to believe him. He put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands to look at me straight on.

“First of all, I’ll figure something out with work. I don’t want you to worry.”

“That’s a little difficult…”

“I know. I need to talk to a lawyer, discuss options. Figure out where to go next.”

“All right.” That made sense. He had a next step.

“Second, your mother gave everyone a big scare,” Chris said. “That always makes things worse. Maybe there’s a new medication the doctors haven’t tried, or there’s a way she can spend some more time with us here at the house. Maybe that would help.”

“Maybe.” All I could think was that I was going to lose her. And now, especially since I’d found her notebook, her stories about us, I wanted to make things right. I wanted to talk. There were things I needed to say to Mother. Now, I might not get a chance.

Chris patted my arm. “Let’s see what the x-rays show. And you said she has a check-up this week. That’ll help us decide what to do.”

“Okay.”

We rocked on the swing and sipped our coffee.

“What about your folks? You were going to tell me.”

Chris rubbed his hands together. “Melissa, it hurts me to say this. The whole issue, all of the donations to the medical center and other places, it was all to punish me.”

“Punish you?”

“My parents didn’t want us to get married.” He lifted his palms and shrugged. “When we broke up and I went home, they pushed me into marrying their friends’ daughter. She had a trust fund, the family was well connected. In their minds, it was perfect.”

“So, they gave you an ultimatum?”

The answer was obvious. Of course they did. It all made sense; I had chosen not to see it.

“That’s why they cut you out of their will?” I exclaimed. “That’s the reason?”

Chris nodded. “It was my decision. I knew we could make it by ourselves.”

“I wish you had told me a long time ago. I guess it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

“No,” he shook his head.

“I understand.”

Opening up about his parents was a huge step for Chris. And he’d made a huge sacrifice for me. It took guts, bravery, and love. An incredible amount.

He cleared his throat. “Let’s talk about you for a minute, okay?”

I reached over and took his hand.

Chris looked out into the front yard, then back at me. “And so, what about the station? Is Drew going to hire someone for Alyssa’s job?”

“I’m going to talk to Drew soon. Chris, I want to stay in this job.” There, I said it out loud.

“Really? And give up producing?”

“Really.”

Chris turned to face me. “Okay. You should go for it, then. I kind of suspected that’s what might happen.” He inhaled deeply. “I’ve been so wrapped up with my work issues, I really haven’t told you what a good job you’re doing. You’ve been a trooper. Everyone says so.”

I smiled.

Chris rubbed my shoulder. “But what else is bothering you? There’s something. I can tell.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Well, two things, really, that turned out to be nothing,” I started to say.

“Come on,” Chris urged.

Gosh, I was nervous now. I felt like we needed Dr. Phil here. Or Candace. It was scary. I debated about running back into the house and skipping this part of the discussion. But that wouldn’t be fair to Chris, me, or our marriage.

Here goes.

“Rick Roberts kind of made a pass at me. At the station.”

Chris turned white. “Kind of?”

“Nothing happened. He didn’t touch me. He almost did. And I freaked out.”

My husband winced.

“I made it totally clear that he was in the wrong, I wasn’t interested, and that I would get him in huge trouble if he tried anything funny.” I bit my lip. “He ended up apologizing and swore he would back off and behave. He promised it would never happen again.”

“Do you believe him?” Chris asked. His forehead wrinkled. I could tell he was angry.

“Well,” I said. “I told him there was no way he could afford another divorce. He knows I’d call his wife.”

Chris leaned back. “Wow.” He shook his head. “Do I need to talk to him? Say something?”

“No, that would just make it worse,” I said. “I want to put it behind me. Is that okay?”

He nodded, thinking about what I’d said. “Let me know if anything else happens.” He peered into my eyes. “So, what’s the other issue?”

I pressed a hand to my belly. “Well, I’d been feeling awful, with on and off stomach cramps and nausea. Finally, it was happening so much that I went to see a doctor.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Chris knitted his brows.

“I’m sorry. I thought I was imagining things. Then it didn’t go away. The doctor’s office had this last minute appointment,” I explained. “So, while she was running some tests, I know this sounds crazy…”

Chris wrinkled his forehead. “What? What happened?”

“I thought I might be pregnant.”

My husband was wide-eyed. “But, you’re not?”

“No.”

He fell back against the swing. “Whoa. Sheesh.”

“And so, I got to thinking about babies and what having another child would mean. And then, I worried about Kelly being gone. I thought about Candace and her girls, how Jaden wandered off the other day. I got all upset.”

Chris took my hand.

“And then I had just done this adoption interview about how people give up their babies and they talked about how there were no unwanted children, just unfound families. It was great and such an inspirational piece.”

My throat started to hurt. I fought back my emotions so that I could explain. “So, in the doctor’s office, I’m thinking about all of this and kind of getting excited. When the test results came back, I was just sad. Kind of relieved. But mostly sad.”

I took a deep breath. “And I know you didn’t want…and probably still don’t want any more children.”

Chris gazed into my eyes. “Melissa, we haven’t talked about this in a really long time. Years and years. We were both new parents. I was spoiled and I’d lost my trust fund. I could barely take care of me, let alone you and Kelly. It was scary.”

“I know.”

“Why didn’t you try and bring it up again later?” He stopped himself. He knew.

Because you wouldn’t talk about it. And I gave up.

“Things are different, Mel. We’re not kids anymore.

“Don’t remind me.” I rolled my eyes.

Chris put an arm around me and hugged me close. “So, let’s think about it.”

“Hey, good morning, Drew. It’s Melissa.” I held the phone to my ear, and waited until Drew finished his conversation with someone else.

I tried to rub the Monday morning sleep out of my eyes. The weekend had simply been draining. My talk with Chris about anchoring and then telling him about Rick and the pregnancy test had worn me out. I was still reeling from his confession about Tyler and quitting his job. Chris and I had so much to work on.

The rest of the weekend had been consumed with Mother, making sure she was okay, and getting things settled at the nursing home. We had an appointment with her doctor later in the week. It was all going to work out. Somehow.

And now I had to ask for what I wanted.

Drew came back on the line. “What’s up?”

“Hey, could I have a few minutes of your time today?” I asked. “In person?”

“Just a sec,” Drew snapped. He barked orders to one of the reporters. “Mel, it’s not Alyssa again, is it? Please tell me no.”

“No, Drew. It’s not her.”

The static from the scanner crackled in the background.

“All right, then come in a little early. Hang on.” Drew hummed and typed something on a keyboard. “Say, around noon?”

“Sounds good.”

Drew slammed the phone down, already engrossed in another conversation.

“Ouch!” I said out loud. My ears were still ringing as I came down the stairs. I stopped at the door to Chris’s office and he looked up from the screen of his laptop.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Chris leaned back in his chair.

“Nothing,” I replied, rubbing at my temples. “I made an appointment to see Drew around noon.”

“Good. I can’t wait to hear what he says.” Chris gave me a half-smile, then looked back to the computer screen. He tapped his pencil furiously and scanned notes he had jotted on a piece of paper.

“I just got off an interesting call myself. Macon Financial’s attorneys.” Chris sat back in his chair and swiveled it from side to side. “From the sound of it, they’re not happy. They kept asking if I was going to take ‘legal action’ against Alyssa and if I had I contacted my attorney.”

“And?”

Chris shrugged. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

“Well, what did they say?” I sat down, my full attention on Chris.

“The guy asked if I was certain I wanted to resign. He alluded my job was being held open in case I changed my mind. And that the ‘situation’ was being corrected, whatever that means.”

Chris leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Um, there was something asked about my pain and suffering. Did my treatment affect my work? Did I know about Tyler’s involvement with anyone else? Namely, a client in Atlanta? Blah, blah, blah. EEOC laws. What did I know about those? Questions like that.”

I let my head fall to the side of the wing-tipped chair. “What do you think they want? To make a settlement?”

“It’s possible.” Chris replied with a tinge of hope. “Wouldn’t that be something? What we could do with that money? I could open my own business, we could travel.”

In my heart, I wanted to believe him. My head was not so sure.

“Sure,” I answered, my mind in a million different places. “It would be something.”

That is, if all you’ve told me about Tyler is all true…

He started scribbling calculations on a Post-it note.

“Babe,” I interrupted. I had to say something. It was time that I put a stop to our casual reliance on small yellow squares to communicate everything and anything.

Chris stopped writing and raised his eyes to meet mine. “Hey.”

“Promise me, in the future, you’ll just call,” I said. “Or, talk to me in person. Or just be creative. Smoke signals, a message in a bottle?”

My husband wrinkled his brow. “Come again?”

“The Post-its.”

“Ah,” he looked down at the thick pad of yellow squares. “So, don’t use these?”

“Well, not never,” I smiled. “Just try and talk to me first.”

“What if,” Chris asked with a sly smile, “I have to leave you a note because you’re on an assignment in South America and your cell phone is dead, e-mail is down, and no one’s at the station? Say the president calls and wants to meet with me. He’s sending Air Force One and I have to tell you where I am.”

I crossed my arms. “At least use a different color.”

Chris grinned. “How about pink?”

Thank goodness the news business cranked into hyper-drive on Monday. The beginning of each week usually meant more stories, which in turn, meant more issues to resolve. Bottom line, work chaos meant less time to stress out about my own issues. And this Monday was no different.

The main copy machine used to print all of the newsroom scripts was broken. A stressed-out repair tech hovered over the guts of the equipment, crumpled paper in one hand, a screwdriver in the other.

Joe was in the back of the room, complaining to our audio guy that sunspots had ruined the satellite feed from CNN. And to make matters worse, I could hear Drew already arguing with one of the reporters in his office.

This lecture centered on the importance of using natural sound in video. “What’s the sense of doing a piece on the dangers of drunk driving if you’ve got great crash video, but I can’t
hear
the impact of the cars smashing into each other?” Drew waved his arms emphatically.

Rick, legs propped on his desk, eyeballed me as I hung up my suit and set my heels on the floor. Since I was early, I was still in casual mode, wearing a boot-cut pair of Joe’s Jeans, a slim black tee-shirt, and sling-back sandals.

A paper airplane flew by my head and crashed on the floor as I sat down and flipped through the mail on my desk. A second folded-up jet landed next to my elbow. I promptly sent that one back in Rick’s direction over my shoulder.

“Welcome to the funny farm,” Rick quipped, his pen circling next to his ear.

“What’re you doing here so early?” I teased back. “Don’t you need your beauty rest?”

“If you say so,” he shot back, starting to get up from his seat with a straight face. “I’ll gladly leave all of the work for you today.”

He began to walk away from his desk.

“Sit back down, mister,” I commanded. “You did that last week, remember?” I had worried about things being awkward between us, but Rick was doing his best to put me at ease.

All at once, my phone rang and the newsroom scanner started blaring. I covered my ear with one hand and opened my phone with the other. The caller ID said it was Chris.

“Hello?” I said, trying hard not to shout.

“What’s all that noise?” Chris asked.

“The normal newsroom junk. It’s Monday.” I raised my voice. “Did you find out anything?” Chris’s answer got lost in the squawk of the scanner.

Attention all units. Structure fire…

“Hang on,” I said into the phone, hoping Chris heard me. I put my hand over the receiver.

“Rick, can you find out about that fire and decide whether we need to send someone?”

Rick grabbed a pen and notepad to jot down information. I turned around and put the phone back to my ear, then walked into the hallway.

“You still there?” I asked Chris. “Sorry about that. Couldn’t hear a thing.”

“Still here,” Chris answered. “What I was trying to tell you was that Macon Financial is trying to cut me a deal. A settlement. They want to resolve before things get sticky and we go to court and splash the story all over. Bad publicity for the company, you know the drill.”

All too well.

“So you spoke to an attorney, I take it?” I prompted for information. “What’d he say?”

“He was pretty upbeat about the figure they quoted. Of course, we’re not going to say that.” Chris ruffled some papers. “Are you ready for this?

Attention all units… Attention all units…

“Hang on, Chris. I’ve got to check on this. The scanner won’t quit going off. Just a minute.”

Seconds later, commotion erupted in the newsroom. When I turned around, Rick stood inches from my nose, breathing hard.

“Melissa, I think you need to hear this.”

“Chris, I’ll have to call you back.” I hung up.

I matched Rick step for step back to the newsroom as he explained, “There’s a structure fire off Coliseum Drive about a mile or so from Macon Northside Hospital. An apartment building, from the sound of it. The dispatcher is calling in all available units in the area. From what I can tell, it started in the kitchen as a grease fire.”

Drew was waiting by my desk, listening for the latest on the scanner. His face was grim.

“What’s going on?”

Drew bit the end of his pen. “We’ve got to get out there. The problem is, we have three reporters today, and they’re all busy. I just sent one on an interview with the governor. Press conference about the Georgia Lottery.”

“One reporter is at the hospital covering a set of quadruplets born this morning.” Rick checked the run down. “Interviewing the mom and dad—who have three other children.”

“So where’s Rob Glass? Can we divert him?”

Both Drew and Rick shook their heads. “It’ll take too long to bring him back. He’s doing a feature piece at
Wild Adventures
in Valdosta.”

I glanced around the room and thought quickly. “I’ll do it.” There wasn’t much other choice. It was early in the day, with plenty of time left to put together the six o’clock show. “Can you keep the a.m. producer here until I get back, to watch the phones and fax machine?”

Without waiting for a reply, I gathered a notepad and pen. I glanced at my reflection in the glass. No mascara, hair could use a comb-through. Oh well. “If you can deal with Melissa Moore sans makeup and fancy outfit, I’m good to go. Who’s available to shoot it?”

Drew, frustrated, threw up his hands. “Everyone’s gone. What about someone from the advertising department? Aren’t they shooting commercials today?”

“I’ll go with her,” Rick interrupted. Within seconds, he was at the back of the room and scooping up equipment. “Melissa, grab an extra battery and let’s get out of here.”

“What’s the address?” I followed Rick down the stairs and out to the news van.

“Off Coliseum. A few blocks down on Magnolia.” His face was lined with worry. He recited the street number.

“Rick, oh God! That’s not an apartment building, that’s a nursing home. My mother lives there!”