Stuart scowled.
I sat a little straighter. “For the truth?”
Her smile, though thin, was genuine. “They call it libel.”
I let out a shaky breath. “So what happens?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. We wait.” She leaned back in her chair. “We’re standing behind this story every inch of the way. Aren’t we, Stuart?”
He threw up his hands, and then glared at me. “This better be true.”
“Please, Stuart,” Tanya said. She’d calmed down an awful lot. “You live for this.”
He grunted, but he’d also calmed down a little, if I could judge at all by the fact that his face was merely pink, rather than magenta. “Do you know how much ad money you just cost me?”
“Talk to me tomorrow after marketing looks at our stats.” She looked back at me. “You’re not fired. Get back to work. You still have three stories due this afternoon.”
Somehow, I wasn’t even surprised. I took a shaky breath, and found that having a direction helped to stabilize me. “Will do.”
I went back to my desk but actually couldn’t concentrate on anything, so I swiped up my phone and climbed up to the fourteenth floor, where anyone in the building could check into a phone booth. I closed the door behind me, automating the light, and dialed Mom.
She picked up on the first ring. “Hi, sweetie.”
Her voice was so calming and normal that the world steadied a little bit. “Hi, Mom. How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m grading memoirs. How are you? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
I let out a shaky breath. “I am at work. I, um, we just published a kind of controversial article I wrote and I’m kind of freaking out.”
“Oh, sweetie, I’m sure it’s okay.”
How was she sure? I wasn’t sure. She was my mom; it was her job to say everything was okay.
Then again, that was why I had called her.
“It’s about concussions.”
“Oh.” She sounded slightly interested, which was about three degrees warmer than she usually sounded when discussing football. “That sounds interesting.”
“Yeah, it is—except, I don’t know, it’s kind of a personal article that I wrote and now people are mad at me and I don’t really know what to do.”
“Is it a good article?”
I tried to think clearly. Was it a good article?
It was an honest article. It was a heartfelt article. It was written to the be
st of my abilities.
I took a deep breath. “It is a good article.”
“Then you remember that, and you don’t let anyone shake you.”
Easier said than done.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I went straight to Abe’s apartment after work. I’d barely shut the door behind me before I asked, “How is it?”