AllFreeNovel
Share Us
DAY ONE
TUESDAY
CHAPTER ONE
Spring had sprung in the newsroom of KWMT-TV in Sherman, Wyoming.
At least Wyoming’s version of March had sprung.
Don’t think of daffodils and azaleas. More like being grateful daylight eked out a bigger share of the twenty-four hours. Maybe some stirring awe as calving season began.
To me, March in Wyoming meant trying to minimize exposure to it. At the moment, that meant cutting the elapsed time from vehicle — the station’s NewsMobile — to inside KWMT’s double set of glass doors.
As usual, I beat Diana Stendahl in that sprint.
She had the disadvantage of being weighed down by tools of her trade as the best cameraperson I’d worked with in a TV news career from Dayton to St. Louis to Washington, D.C., to New York, before crash-landing here.
It was a testament to our friendship that I did not plunge into the warmth and desert her. I stopped and held the door — from inside. It was awkward, but got me out of the wind.
When Wyomingites say the wind’s biting, think Jaws, not a puppy.
“Thanks... It’s natural people want to know about the wedding,” she continued our pre-sprint conversation.
“Then they should talk to Tamantha—” That’s my stepdaughter-to-be, the only daughter of Thomas David Burrell. We will make our familyhood official at the end of June. “—or my mother.”
I turned left from the entry hallway into the open bullpen with battered gray desks scattered like ectoplasm from an exploded gray blob. I might have watched a vintage sci-fi movie recently with Tamantha. She’d criticized the science. I gawked at the effects. Not believable, but entertaining.
Diana followed me to the third desk from the windows, the one with the E.M. Danniher nameplate, resting her equipment bag on it. “People asking about the wedding plans is their way of wishing you well.”
“Urging me to add pigeons is—”
“Doves.”
“—not wishing me well. It’s inviting a bird to poop on the bride. On top of which, our esteemed school district trustee was trying to drum up business for her son, the recently minted dove wrangler. One of forty-seven jobs he’s had in the two years I’ve been here. I can’t even imagine how many trees would die to print his complete resume.”
After unwinding my scarf, which had held the coat’s hood in place and muffled my lower face, and stashing gloves fit for the Antarctic in the pockets, I slid off my coat. People who wore jackets must not have temperature sensors in their legs. Or they went numb at the end of September and haven’t felt them since.
“That’s an exaggeration,” she said mildly.
“Not much. And—” I stopped and looked around. “Something’s wrong.”
Newsrooms have atmospheres and they’re seldom subtle, certainly not to those of us who’ve spent a lot of time in them.
In these past months, there’d been a palpable feeling of spring-like hope in KWMT’s newsroom. It being a much happier place was not me projecting my state of mind — or heart — now that Tom and I were together. Instead, it was the considered opinion of every member of the staff I talked with about the subject.
Granted that did not include a couple grumpy holdouts who, no doubt, missed now-forfeited benefits accrued from currying favor with the previous regime.
In fact, the newsroom mood registered downright jovial since Mike Paycik became majority owner in November. It had nothing to do with our surroundings — he was putting money into other parts of the operation than décor. And the mood endured despite everyone working extra hours because luring new hires to Wyoming in deepest winter proceeded at an appropriately glacial pace.
Mind you, jovial in a newsroom tends to consist of dark humor. At this moment, though, I didn’t pick up a hint of even the darkest, driest humor.
I scanned two fellow workers in the bullpen, with their heads down and headsets on as they stared at their screens, their expressions far from ebullient. I’d get nothing out of them. With Diana right behind me, I made a beeline for staffers clustered where the entry hallway turned left, marking the end of the bullpen and carving out an awkward triangle of space that used to be the staff breakroom, but now housed the assignment desk and news aides’ station.
Audrey Adams was at the assignment desk keyboard, which controlled three monitors, instead of the previous one. Other staffers ranged on either side of her.
“What’s wrong, Audrey?” Her glum expression made that an obvious starter question.
“The latest listings of towns in Wyoming are out and Sherman didn’t make it. Again.”
