The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [66]
Her own attention to detail along with the brilliance of Oliver's overview has made them an effective team. But now with Ken in charge, things are already different. He means well and he is certainly trying to do his best to run the paper in his brother's absence, but his casual approach makes her uneasy. “No big deal”: Ken's mantra. If he said it once at the last editorial meeting he said it easily a dozen times. She was probably being overly sensitive, but couldn't help noticing the bemused glances and raised eyebrows around the table whenever he spoke. Everything has always been a big deal to Oliver. No detail escapes his scrutiny. Typos infuriate him, but factual errors are completely unacceptable. Having to run corrections enrages him. He likens it to hanging one's dirty underpants out on the line for everyone to see. An overstatement, she knows. Honest mistakes come with the pressure of getting a story written for deadline-driven editors, but Oliver's old-fashioned ethics are the bedrock of the paper's integrity. Because he involves himself in every department and in all the big local stories, reporters don't even try to do favors, quashing or burying stories, or tweaking facts to make someone look, usually not even better, but less offensive. Until his stroke he was still complaining about Ken trying to soft-pedal the CraneCopley scandal. Oliver has his own prejudices and failings, but truth has always been sacred to him. His private life might be untidy, his domestic situation bewildering, but no one can question his professional probity. And now, how ironic, how cruel, after a lifetime devoted to the precision of language, to be deprived of it, she thinks, seeing her message button flash red.
“Yes,” Hilda answers, guardedly, as if to a question, though none has been asked. “There's someone here. Mr. Hawkins.”
“Yes. Send him in.”
His suit is linty and rumpled. His shirt is wrinkled. The door closes in a draft of stale clothes and sweaty cologne. She's strangely relieved. He's here. The storm having hit is not the gale she feared. Just ordinary, as if it's already spun itself out. A fading turbulence. He seems older, and weary. It was a week and a half ago that Ken mentioned meeting him. Every day since she glances back over her shoulder before getting into her car, steels herself when the phone rings. Last night Drew and Chloe were studying for midterms. Around ten o'clock they decided to order pizza. The doorbell rang a while later, startling Nora from a deep sleep. Certain it was him she jumped out of bed and flew down the hallway. All she could see over the railing was Chloe and, in the doorway, a shadowy man.
“Get away from him! Don't let him in!” With her screams, Drew ran in from the kitchen and Ken burst out of the bedroom.
“Mom!” Chloe shouted, holding out the pizza box. “It's pizza, that's all. It's just pizza.”
Ken led her back to bed. “See,” he teased, opening the closet door and then lifting the bed skirt. “No bogeyman.”
Without being asked, Eddie sits down. “Sorry about your brother-in-law. How is he?”
“Better, thank you.” She won't be unnerved. Glancing at him, she opens her bottom drawer. She slides out the large envelope and slips it, unseen, onto her lap. Every move has been planned. She knows what must be done. She knows she never hit that drunken man. It was Eddie wielding the pipe, just as it is his brazen bandying of the outrageous lie, repeating the same facts with enough conviction that makes her doubt herself If she has learned nothing else in her newspaper experience, it is how easily facts can be distorted to change the story. Truth is an absolute, but with tentacles. As long as there are multiple viewpoints, there can be no one true story. Memory abrades the jagged edges, fills in the holes. Her truth of events that night may have been clouded by alcohol, fear, and abhorrence. But his is the twisted connivance of a desperate man.