Page 92 of Between the Lines

She shook her head. She had work to do. She could moon over Joe later. She made a note on the pad. Trim opening anecdote slightly. Leave a pause before the music.

The third tab was the one she kept avoiding.

The Buzz interview with a certain troublemaker. Darcy Lane.

Darcy’s words stared back at Cece from the document like they were daring her to change them. But Cece wouldn’t do that. She never put words into people’s mouths. She only reported what they’d actually said.

What happened after that wasn’t up to her.

Cece exhaled slowly before reaching for her water. The interview itself hadn’t been explosive in any obvious way. Darcy hadn’t said anything overtly critical or super dramatic. There had been no confession of anything, no outright claim.

But that was almost worse. The weight of the interview lay in what Darcy had chosen to emphasize. Not to mention the questions she’d skirted around with what seemed like practiced ease.

She’d talked about fresh starts, reinvention, and finding the right people to align with. She’d also talked a lot about community. About women supporting women. About creating spaces where people could feel seen.

All the right kind of nonsense buzzwords that would, in Cece’s opinion, only attract more people to whatever it was Darcy was up to.

Cece didn’t like that thought at all. She’d done her best during the interview to remain neutral. She had nodded at the appropriate moments and asked the kinds of follow-up questions that sounded benign but could lead to revealing answers.

Unfortunately, Darcy had responded exactly the way someone with something to hide often did—by sounding reasonable and giving answers just vague enough not to expose anything. And then, of course, there was Gigi, who’d derailed the conversation several times.

Cece tapped her pen against the legal pad and reread one particular answer. It was innocuous on its own. Taken with the rest of the interview, however, it felt calculated.

This is where my work is, she thought. Not in catching Darcy out on a single response, but in how Cece framed the entire thing. How she decided which bits were important enough to see print and which weren’t.

She didn’t want to give Darcy free publicity. Cece wasn’t going to make her look like something she wasn’t, either. The Buzz was a community newsletter, not an investigative piece, and Cece had to respect that. But she also believed words mattered. And she had a responsibility to the readers to tell the truth, no matter if it was on her podcast or through The Buzz.

Truth was everything.

She closed the document for a moment and went back to the podcast stats, letting herself enjoy the small thrill of seeing the numbers tick upward again. She nodded. This reminded her why she was doing all of this in the first place.

She wasn’t just looking for validation. She was creating something. A new venue for stories that deserved to be told, not just because she thought so but to give a voice to people in her age bracket.

Cece picked up her mug, realized it was empty, and shook her head. She went into the kitchen, refilled it, checked on Peanut, who was snoozing on the back of the couch, then she came back to the studio with a renewed sense of focus.

One thing at a time.

Finish Joe’s episode. Once that was done, she would give her full attention to editing Darcy’s interview. The finished product would be something honest. Something Cece could be proud of. There was no other alternative.

Cece got to work. An hour later, she listened to the last minute of Joe’s interview one more time, because she liked how it ended. Her final question had been, “What’s the one piece of advice you would give to someone contemplating trying something new?”

His answer had been perfect. “Don’t die with your music still inside you.”

She let a second of silence go by, then added the outro reminding people to share, like, and subscribe if they hadn’t already. The transition worked so well. She saved the file, then leaned back against her chair and let herself feel the small, satisfying click of completion.

She closed the editing software. That was Episode Two done. She’d upload it next and schedule the release date.

She opened her email, more out of habit than anything else. Her inbox loaded, and one subject line immediately caught her attention.

Podcast interview — yes, I’d love to.

Excellent. Cece smiled and opened it. The message was full of enthusiasm from one of the people she’d reached out to early on and assumed might be a long shot, Goldie Schwartz, who was a Holocaust survivor. At the age of eighty-three, she’d decided to try her hand at painting.

Now, ten years in, her work was in galleries across Florida and she’d just been commissioned to paint a portrait of Beechwood’s mayor.

Goldie thanked Cece for thinking of her, said she’d already listened to the first episode, and then suggested a couple of possible dates to do the interview.

Cece made a note on her legal pad, checked her calendar, then sent a quick reply to keep the momentum going. That would be one more episode in the pipeline, and with such an impressive guest. That would be fantastic.