Whispers and Lies. Diane Pershing

slides on a screen: bodies being blown up in Iraq; more blood-soaked corpses strewn over the wreckage of a train crash in Spain; large-eyed, hollow-cheeked, diseased children in Sudan. “It’s pretty rough out there,” he said somberly. “I got burned-out. There’s a lot of pain in the world, and way too much violence.”

      “So I hear.” Compassion shone from her eyes, followed by a soft smile. “And burnout happens to us all.”

      He shifted his attention to her full plate. “Hey,” he said. “Come on, you have to eat something.”

      Lou was surprised by the change of subject, then she too looked down. Will was nearly done with his dinner and she’d hardly touched hers. She took a bite of her garlic bread, but could barely chew it. For weeks, her appetite simply hadn’t been there. It was as though her taste buds had calluses on them. Yes, sir, that new weight-loss gimmick—grief.

      “I’m not very hungry.”

      When their waiter asked if they wanted coffee or dessert, Will looked at Lou and she shook her head. He pointed to her plate. “Wrap that to go and I’ll take the check.”

      When they left the restaurant, night had descended fully, lit faintly by a quarter moon that hung to one side of the church steeple like a dangling earring. Lou took in a deep breath of cool evening air and felt her nausea abating.

      As though echoing her thoughts, Will murmured, “I always forget how much I love the nights here in Susanville. Clean air. No glaring lights to interfere with the stars. Not much traffic or noise. Quiet.”

      “Yes.”

      “Let’s stroll a bit before I take you home.” He carried her packed-up dinner in one hand, so he bent his other arm and, as before, offered it to Lou. “Okay?”

      “Sure.”

      Lou inserted her hand in the crook of his elbow and they walked along, not speaking, their footsteps echoing on the nearly deserted sidewalks. This close to Will, she felt so small. Which made sense—he was a foot taller than she was.

      But it was more than that, always had been. It had to do with the power of that personality of his and the effect it used to have—still had?—on her. Will reduced her somehow, robbed her of a firm sense of who she was. She felt so…not helpless, exactly, but sapped of strength, as though all her energy—whatever wasn’t being utilized by unrequited love—was needed just to keep up. She didn’t care for the feeling, not in the least.

      She shot a sideways glance at him. Lit as he was by the moon and the occasional old-fashioned streetlamp, his face was all planes and shadows. Maturity agreed with him; he was more filled out, less bony. His face, with lines across his forehead and around the mouth and eyes, had not just beauty but character. If she was thirty-three, that made him thirty-six or thirty-seven. He was in his prime, the years when a man finally grows into his face and a woman’s begins to droop.

      She was contemplating the unfairness of Mother Nature toward her own sex when Will broke the silence. “Have you always lived here?”

      “Since I was thirteen.”

      “And before that?”

      “We moved around a lot.”

      “Your dad’s job?”

      “No, my mom’s. Dad was a ship’s captain in the Merchant Marines. He died when I wasn’t even a year old.”

      So, Will thought, if his suspicions were correct, Janice McAndrews had invented a father for her little girl and had never given her a reason to doubt his existence. “What a shame,” he said, “to lose your father so early in your life.”

      “You can’t really miss what you’ve never had.”

      After passing a series of storefronts, they both stopped and stared at the sign in one window. Susanville Courier, Est. 1957, it read. Lou smiled. “And just think, instead of writing for the Times, all this could have all been yours.”

      “Never wanted the job.”

      Her eyebrows shot up. “Really? I’m surprised.”

      “I know, everyone took it for granted. But, trust me, it was the furthest thing from my mind. I hated the paper.”

      “Why?”

      A sense of bitterness tinged with sadness pierced him then, a feeling he hadn’t allowed himself to experience in years. “It robbed me of a father. He was always here, at the paper, hardly ever at home.”

      “A workaholic.”

      He nodded and they continued walking toward the clinic. “The man invented the concept. He couldn’t come to my soccer games because of a story, unless he was covering the game. Couldn’t visit me in the hospital when I had my tonsils out—deadline on an issue. He was editor, publisher, chief reporter, and I was pretty low on the list of his priorities. Yeah, I hated the Courier.”

      He was shocked at how much passion he still felt about the subject and had no idea why he was telling Lou about it. A man who never talked about his disappointment with his father—not to anyone—Will was letting Lou in, as though they’d been intimate friends for years.

      She cocked her head and gazed up at him, her deep brown eyes once again filled with understanding. “And yet you went into the newspaper business.”

      “I am my father’s son, I guess.” He’d gotten that little insight a while ago—that he was way, way too much like his old man for comfort. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, etc.” He shook his head. “Wow. I sure hadn’t planned on telling you all that,” he confessed. “Let’s pretend I didn’t.”

      “Why? Afraid I’ll pierce your manly armor and find out you have emotions?”

      Will chuckled. “Busted.”

      “Men.” It was her turn to shake her head.

      “Uh-oh. Is that disdain for my sex I hear? What’s the story there?”

      “None of your business,” she said lightly.

      “I showed you mine, you have to show me yours.”

      “In a manner of speaking.”

      He grinned. “In a manner of speaking. Hey!”

      This last was directed at the backs of two men who, out of nowhere, it seemed, ran past them, obviously in a hurry, nearly knocking Lou and him over.

      “Hey!” Will called out again, putting his arm around Lou’s shoulder and pulling her close. But the men didn’t stop; instead, they sped up and disappeared around the corner. “Idiots,” he muttered.

      In another half block, they were at the clinic. “This where your car is?” he asked.

      “Where my house is.” She pointed upstairs. “Mom and I—I mean, I,” she amended, “live upstairs.”

      Together, his arm still around her, they walked up the alleyway at the side of the building where a flight of wooden steps led to the upper floor. At the foot of the stairs, Lou turned, slipped out from under his arm and said, “Well, thanks for dinner. See you at the wedding on Sunday.”

      He grabbed her hand before she could bolt up the stairs. “Not so fast. You were about to let me in on the reasons for the ‘I hate men’ attitude.”

      “I was about to do no such thing.”

      “Tell me anyway.”

      She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t hate men.”

      “Tell me.”

      “It’s boring.”

      “Try me.”

      She shook her hand loose. “God! You don’t give up, do you? Okay. It’s just that…” She shrugged. “The opposite sex and I don’t mix well. Let’s leave it at that.”

      “Nope.