Page 13 of The Business Trip

“What will you do?” I asked, suddenly thinking of some of the more nefarious possibilities and feeling jittery.

“Don’t worry, Anna. He will never bother you again. I know lots of people in Madison. If I could hop on a flight right now, I would, but I’ve got a lot of things going on here in Hot-lanta at the moment. But you’re my girl and so is Jasmine. I protect my girls, and of course Ialwaystake care of myself.”

“What do I owe you for doing this?” I asked, thinking that I didn’t have a lot of extra cash after loaning that $500 to Jasmine. And when would I get that back?

“Free,” she said. “I have some buddies who owe me a favor. Just text me his address.”

Thanking her profusely, I hung up. I didn’t know Glenn’s address off the top of my head, but I remembered a card Jasmine had sent me for Christmas less than a month ago. I kept all of my cards in a cigar box. Retrieving the envelope, I found their address, plain as day. I hesitated for only a moment. Would I regret sending this to Raven? Nahh. I needed her, and as shesaid, she always took care of her girls. Herself too, of course, but in this case she was protecting us.

I texted Jasmine:

Glenn is getting weird but Raven is going to help out.

She wrote back:

Really? She’s helping me with something too

That was odd. Raven hadn’t said anything. I replied:

What is she helping with?

But Jasmine did not respond.

CHAPTER 12Bruce

The Monday After the Flight

I was looking forward to Steph returning to work today. It was always extra on me as assistant news director when she was gone. I could be faced with any number of decisions to make, from legal issues about whether we could run an image or a piece of music, to factual issues and whether we were being fair to both sides, to basic HR things—someone needed to take bereavement, someone else was having back surgery, two employees were sniping about each other and needed an intervention, things like that.

My days were nonstop anyway, what with a pair of teenagers at home, which meant running a shuttle service to practices, rehearsals, and hangout times, but then add in Stephanie being gone—and she was kind of gone a lot, in my opinion—and I had my hands full at work too.

I’d see her for the 8:30 manager meeting and fill her in on the stuff I had dealt with: We had a reporter who was complaining that she didn’t like to do live shots in the cold, and our chief meteorologist, who was so popular with the public,was being difficult again. He had retweeted something political that he shouldn’t have. We had an election to plan for and Black History Month coming up in just a week that we needed to finalize stories for. But there were no major issues while she was gone. No one had walked into my office and said they were quitting; no one had complained that they absolutely couldn’t work with so-and-so. All things considered, it was a good week.

I said goodbye to my wife, Ellen, and son, Will, but took my daughter, Claire, her giant cello, and the dog with me in the car. Driving Claire to middle school and dragging her cello out of the back of the minivan, I nearly dropped it in the process.

“Daaaad,” she moaned, but scooped it into her skinny arms and ran off without so much as a goodbye. Next I left Barkley at the way-too-expensive doggie daycare that Ellen insisted on so he wouldn’t get bored. Barkley also left me without so much as a proverbial dog wave.

The final stop before work was the McDonald’s drive-through for coffee. It was cheaper than Starbucks and, in my opinion, better. Taking my mega-cup into the station with me, I gave a hello to Bernie at the reception desk and went into the newsroom, where the place was just coming alive.

Glancing at my watch, I saw that it was 8:23. The manager meeting started in seven minutes. Steph’s door was closed and the light was off. She was usually here by this time, but maybe she got stopped by a train or something. Continuing to look over my emails, I evaluated our reporter-photographer pairings and story selections for the day.

At 8:29, her door remained shut. The other managers were gathering in the conference room across the newsroom. A tingeof annoyance surged through me. If she was going to be late, couldn’t she have the decency to let me know? Double-checking my phone in case I’d missed anything, and seeing that I hadn’t, I shot her a quick text:

Are you running late? Do you need me to start the meeting?

No response. The clock moved to 8:30 and I sighed, picking up my laptop and walking into the conference room. The rest of the managers looked at me quizzically.

“Where’s Stephanie?” our digital director, Lucy, asked. “Isn’t she back today?”

“I’m not sure. Let’s get started and we’ll bring her up to speed when she gets here,” I replied.

Running a meeting was bad enough. Running one when you weren’t expecting to was worse. I felt out of sorts and screwed up the order of people I needed to call on, even though I had done it many times.

When we broke at 8:50, I checked my phone again. Nothing. Now I felt a prickle of worry. This was really unlike Steph. Had something happened? A car accident on the way to work? No, it couldn’t be that. One thing about working in a TV station: You knew of every accident, shooting, stabbing, heart attack, fire, and train derailment in a five-county area. Police scanners were on 24/7, and those who were monitoring them at the assignment desk would have alerted us if anything big happened.

The dayside executive producer, Nora, must have sensed my feelings because she lingered in the conference room after the others had left.

“Is everything OK with Steph?” she whispered. “Wasn’t she supposed to come back today?”

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