Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
And two really good job offers.
The first from the New York Times, a senior investigative correspondent position that would have made twenty-six-year-old Tessa Ward sit down on the floor and put her head between her knees. The second from Al Jazeera English—a bureau anchor role based in Doha, covering the Middle East. Benefits package, housing allowance, the kind of byline that opens doors I never thought I’d even be able to knock on.
I have both offers open in separate tabs on my computer and I’ve been looking at them on and off all morning. When I took on this story, in a million years I never thought it would bring me opportunity, but here I am with a wealth of it sitting before me.
My office is quiet while the rest of the newsroom churns around me. I manage to tune it all out—phones ringing, someone arguing with a source on speakerphone, the copier chugging in the corner. But in here it’s just me and the weak light coming through the window that faces the parking garage.
The piece ran six thousand words above the fold with a full graphic of the shell company structure that Josie helped me map. Erik Lanning’s photo, provided by his sister, ran beside the headline: The Burn Rate: How RainVest Holdings Turned Wildfires into Profit and Silenced the Man Who Knew.
It’s been called Pulitzer-worthy by three different media critics.
I keep waiting for that to land somewhere it can stick, but I’m having a hard time comprehending the accolades that continue to flow in.
A knock on my door jolts me out of my thoughts and Danny Cho leans in the doorway. He’s the photo editor and works a few offices down from mine. I haven’t seen him since before… everything.
He’s got a coffee in each hand and a gleam in his eye as if he has good news. “There she is, the woman of the hour.”
“Hey, Danny,” I say, but I’m tired of talking to people. I’m tired of being the It Girl, but I accept the proffered coffee.
“This is from the whole photo team,” he chirps.
“Appreciate it,” I say, and take a dutiful sip.
“That statement Erik Lanning’s family put out yesterday was something else, right?”
“Indeed,” I murmur. In it, they sang my praises, saying that I gave Erik a voice… gave him his name back.
Danny must read the indifference on my face, because he mercifully taps the doorframe twice. “Glad you’re back,” he says. “I’ll catch you later.”
I look at the coffee for a moment, then I look back out my window.
Erik Lanning’s family said I gave him his name back. A journalism school in Boston wants me to come talk to students about accountability reporting. The Times wants to put my byline on their front page.
I should be riding high on this victory, and yet I feel like someone scooped out the inside of my chest.
I don’t get it. I’ve been trying to locate the problem—why I feel so empty—for four days and I keep arriving at the same answer. I also keep rejecting said answer because it doesn’t fit the version of myself I’ve spent the last decade constructing.
The answer is Cole.
I’m not obsessing with the story and I refuse to mull over the danger or the kidnapping. I’ve made my peace with the cost of the work.
But when I try to figure out how to make myself feel better about the decisions I’ve made, it always circles back to Cole Mercer, the man who told me he loved me in a cabin and then walked out of my life.
I’ve been carrying this weight like a stone ever since, and frankly, it hurts worse than the first time we broke up.
Five years ago when we ended, I was angry enough that the anger did some of the work of healing. This time, there’s a cavernous void and it feels like someone turned the lights off in a room I know by heart.
The job offers don’t touch it. The Pulitzer conversation doesn’t touch it. Danny’s coffee doesn’t touch it. They should fill that emptiness. They absolutely should because I have wanted exactly this since forever.
Cole’s voice keeps finding me in the depths of my memories. “I watched you hang from a hook in a cabin in the dark and I thought I was too late. And you’re standing here telling me it was worth it.”
I’ve been angry at that sentence.
And I’ve also been unable to argue with it.
The thing I haven’t let myself look at directly, that I’ve been circling for four days, is whether I believe the words I said in that living room. Whether I meant them when I said my identity was tied to this work, or whether I was defending a version of myself I built so long ago that I stopped checking to see whether it was still accurate.