Mom blinked fast; there’d be tears. “Do you think he’s the one?”
Maybe. Yes, she so wanted Jack to be her one. “Like you and Dad.”
“Two days, that’s all it took for us.” There was the eye wipe. “We had a weekend together and I just knew.”
“Dad said it took two months.” This was an old family argument.
Mom shook her head. “Stupid man, slow waking up to the truth. You email me some more about you and Jack because you’ve been holding out and I want to know everything.”
“Don’t make me into town gossip, okay?” It was one good reason for not sharing.
“Not till you tell me I can.”
As close to a promise she’d get. “Is Ernest there?”
“Here he is.” The screen showed Ernest looking the other way, tongue lolling. Mom tried to get in front of him. “Ernie, it’s Derelie, here’s your girl,” but Ernest kept moving out of her way, panting and wagging. Mom’s face came back on screen. “Oh, honey, he’s just a dog that doesn’t understand technology.”
He had forgotten her.
“You go cry on Jack’s lovely big shoulders about that.”
“Mom.”
“He needs to see you ugly cry sooner rather than later, you know.”
Derelie spent the night alternatively in Jack’s arms laughing at Martha pushing one of his shoes around the room with her face buried in it, and sharing increasingly heart-melting kisses.
He almost saw her ugly cry the next day. At the editorial meeting, Phil tore into her about the Tribune getting the scoop on the country’s biggest divorce scandal. The Courier lost a substantial amount of traffic over the weekend by not being on that story, and that was her fault.
“Why didn’t we have that story?”
She’d had no idea it was even in the wind. “I—”
“What did we lead with?”
“Movie stars and sick kids.”
“I know that. I’m asking why we weren’t on the story everyone else had a bead on?”
Not everyone, just the Trib. “I’m—”
“Sorry?” Phil barked. “Sorry doesn’t run a newspaper.”
Sorry didn’t begin to cover what she felt. “I suspect it was given as an exclusive.”
Phil slapped a hand on the table, and she flinched. “I’m fucking sure it was. Why wasn’t it our exclusive?”
She couldn’t look at Jack’s face, but he had a grip on his cell that spoke of cracked glass. Now she was sorry she’d finished a sentence, sorry she was caught looking like she didn’t know her job, sorry Phil had gone for her in front of everyone. It wasn’t personal. The same thing happened to others, but that didn’t mean it didn’t sting.
Jack didn’t fare much better. “We need to run the Keepsafe story this week or I’m calling it over,” Phil said.
Jack put his phone on the table. “It’s not there yet.”
“Face it, Haley. It’s not the story you wanted it to be. Get it there or move on.” Phil spun his chair to zone in on Derelie again. “Where’s the love experiment?”
Oh shit. It wasn’t done because they’d both been busy and since Keepsafe wasn’t finalized, Derelie hadn’t gotten in Jack’s face for his part. “It’s—”
“Fuck,” said Phil, glaring at her and Jack in turn. “Don’t care. I’m over it. Drop it.”