Serious journalists don’t pout, especially when they work for one of the country’s top media organizations, so Nadine kept her lower lip firmly against her teeth. Then she typedsulkinto the thesaurus and checked over her options.Funk. Fret. Mope. None of them worked.Aggrieved.Yeah, that tied together her dual feelings of unfairness and WTF at being transferred—really, demoted—to night web editor after the Dot Voline travesty. She supposed she should be grateful she hadn’t been fired. Good journalism jobs were few and far between, thanks to deep cuts in the industry over the last few years.
“How’re you doing?” Lisanne came up with a bag of peach rings and poured a hefty amount into Nadine’s waiting palm.
“I am aggrieved,” announced Nadine, trying it on for size. “How’s the feature on people creating a sea change in the business world?”
“As expected. Half of them used the termaccelerate innovationlike they invented it.”
“Are they eating their own dog food?”
“No, but they’ve bootstrapped thought leadership to enhance dynamic connectivity.”
“No one said that,” said Nadine, feeling better.
“Truly, the guy building the menstrual app did. Want to get a coffee before starting your punishment night shift?” That did make Nadine pout, and Lisanne rolled her eyes. “Come on, you big baby. Look how happy you’ve made Raj. The bags under his eyes have disappeared for the first time since I’ve known him.”
“I heard that,” called Raj, who had been moved into Nadine’s old obituary role. “Since I’ve only been on a normal sleep schedule for a day, you can thank the vitamin C eye patches Myriam bought me last week. She said I looked like a raccoon.”
Lisanne stuffed her mouth with peach rings and glanced at Nadine. “Come on,” she said in a lower voice. “I have news.”
This was tempting. Nadine grabbed her wallet. She deserved a little treat.
TheHeraldwas on Adelaide Street, close to what Daniel referred to as thelocus of powerin an ironic tone, but with slightly less exorbitant leasing rates. Although the most efficient coffee hit was the Tim Hortons in the PATH, the underground mall/tunnel/maze below Toronto’s downtown, on nice days, they frequented a tiny café on Queen Street infamous for its sullen baristas.
“You never answered me about the night shift,” Lisanne said, putting a hat on over her blond hair. She was so pale she burned instead of tanned and was permanently at war with the sun. “Although I know you just started.”
“It’ll be fine.” Nadine wasn’t fully comfortable sharing how much it bothered her to have been moved, the same way she’d downplayed other things that truly mattered, such as her fear of the death threats and their impact on her reporting. She liked Lisanne, but theworkpart of work friends too often got in the way of full trust.
“Will it?”
“Sure. No one will call me Lady Death.” Unfortunately there would be few other benefits. The long hours of quiet last night gave Nadineplenty of time to relive the if-onlys that refused to die since she ran Dot Voline’s obituary.
If only she had trusted the tiny part of her that said it was better to be sure than first.
If only she had called Daniel.
If only she hadn’t looked at her phone in the first place. By morning, the hoax had been revealed, and she would have known it wasn’t Owens and McPhail that had put out the notice but a troll with a fake Owens&McPhail account.
The shame of trying to explain to Daniel why she’d run the obit without confirming Voline’s death had been intense. “I wouldn’t expect this kind of carelessness from someone right out of school,” he’d said. “Let alone an experienced journalist.”
“You said to focus on being first.” She’d instantly regretted her defense.
“In a way that maintains our integrity,” he’d said with a disbelief so great it was like she’d announced an obit for the tooth fairy. “Obviously. The second paragraph of everyNew York Timesobituary is the confirmation of death from a reliable source. Do you think they do that for fun?”
“No.” What made it so much worse was that he was right, and she had talked herself out of her own initial doubt. She hadn’t trusted herself.
“Nadine. We are doing our best to accommodate your…” Daniel hesitated as if trying to square what he truly thought with the potential liability that might come from saying it out loud. “Your inability to cope with the pressure of the political beat. I thought this would at least be within your capacity.”
“I had death threats from a man who showed up at my apartment and was also going to dox me,” she reminded him. “It was the risk to mysafety, not the work.”
“Which we dealt with in accordance with our policy,” Daniel saidwith the displeasure of a man who had been over the same ground a multitude of times. “You didn’t suffer any physical harm, and you agreed it was handled to your satisfaction.”
That didn’t change how she felt the day she opened her email to find a photo of herself in her pajamas taken through the window of her apartment with the eyes X’d out andYOUR NEXTwritten on it.
In her shock, the misspelling ofyou’rehad been almost as disturbing as the message. How could you trust a person—realistically, almost certainly a man—who couldn’t be bothered to spell-check his threats? That kind of person was capable of anything, especially when he was arrogant enough to send it from his own personal and easily traced email.
The message had come after a story she’d run about changes to an immigration policy, which had resulted in a record number of hateful comments and emails from people who thought reporting on something meant endorsing it. Nadine was no stranger to shitty messages from shitty people. She and her colleague Kenzie had created a bingo card where they’d crossed off insults as they came. It took less than a week to fill the card, some squares showing four or five crosses. When Frank Paxton, the politics editor, had noticed, he’d shrugged.
“Need a thick skin for this job,” he said. “I like to think the more comments we get, the better the story.”
