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My feet stopped or more like they stuttered in my haste to get to the office. A slow sigh escaped before I turned, barely able to stifle my eyeroll. “About?”
“Well,” he answered slowly with a sigh of his own. “It’s about that idea of yours to go online with the newspaper. We need to hold off on that for a while. A good long while.”
I just nodded because there was no point trying to talk sense to my daddy. He was as stubborn as a mule and determined to make my life as difficult as possible. “Fine.” I was more certain than ever that the future I’d planned on, no that I planned my entire life around, was slowly fading into nothing.
Into less than nothing.
It was time to make a decision. A real decision, not one made out of anger or spite or even jealousy. I just had to—finally—do what was right for me. No one else, but me. “I’m heading out to see what’s going on around town. See you later.”
“All right.” He waved me off, already distracted by his daily ritual of combing through every line, every character of the entire paper so he could point out my mistakes later. “We’ll talk about the online thing later. I promise.”
“Right. Sure.” It didn’t matter and it wasn’t worth fighting over, not anymore. I needed a sounding board, one that wasn’t personally invested in the outcome of, well however this all turned out. Pippa would be good but Ryan would be even better, so I headed to Dark Horse and hoped for the best.
The restaurant was most empty just before noon which meant Pippa would be busy prepping for the shift ahead, despite being two hundred months pregnant. “Hey Devon, is Ryan around?”
He nodded. “In the office. Go on back, I think they’re decent or at least fully clothed.” Devon was my brother’s assistant and he nodded me back with a smirk.
“Thank you. I think.” I knew the deal with a newly reunited Pippa and Ryan and the smart thing to do would be to knock first, and wait. I was in no mood to wait so I barged right inside. “Oh hey guys, glad I’m not interrupting.”
To their credit, neither of them pulled apart, gasped in shock or pretended to be caught in an intimate position. “Lacey, how is my favorite sister?”
I rolled my eyes. “Besides the fact that I’m your only sister, I’m fine. Sort of. I need to talk so can you guys put your tongues away for a little while? Please?”
“Sure.” Pippa slid from Ryan’s lap and smoothed her blouse with a sheepish grin. “What’s up?”
“It’s Daddy. He’s never going to let me take over the paper and he will never ever retire, so I’m just wasting my time. He refuses to update the paper into the twenty-first century, he hired another worker without telling me and…well, I’m done. Completely and totally done.” It was scary at first, thinking it, but once I said it out loud I knew it was the right decision to make. “I think I have to leave.”
“Carson Creek? You can’t leave Lacey, you just…can’t.” She rubbed her belly, brows furrowed in pain and sadness. “You can’t.”
“No, not Carson Creek, just the CCDJ.” I sighed because as much as the thought of leaving town appealed, there were many reasons I couldn’t. “Stevie loves it here and this would the worst time to uproot her, after the divorce and everything. But I can’t stay at the paper, now if nothing changes.” The idea of doing something else was too appealing right now, and for the sake of my sanity, I had to.
Ryan hadn’t said anything for a long time and I swallowed, waited for him to say something. Anything. “You love being a journalist.”
“I’ve always wanted to be a journalist but I’m not, I’m not even close to one. I’m like a court reporter, or a gossip columnist. I don’t dig up dirt or stories or get scoops on anything.”
“I thought you were happy here?” I understood his confusion because I’d never said anything to my brothers, never voiced any concern or complaint about my job.
“I was, or at least I was planning on being happy here because I thought after I put in my time, did what Daddy wanted, that I’d get what I wanted. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s never going to happen. I’m never going to get a say over what the paper publishes, how it’s published. So, I need to find a way to be happy. Right?” No one said anything and I started to feel foolish. “Right?”
Ryan said nothing and I could only imagine what was going on in his head. Pippa laid her hand on top of mine, sympathy filled her face. “If that’s what you need to do Lacey, we support you. Totally.” She looked to Ryan. “Right honey?” The look she gave my brother warned him against whatever he was building up to say, but it didn’t work.
