Page 2 of A Whisper in the Bay

Alissa still couldn’t speak, but the finality of Stanley’s apology told her that the conversation was over. She choked out an “okay” and got up again. Any fight she had left had drained out of her long before he called her into his office. What would arguing with him about her job do anyway? He had made up his mind and he wasn’t a man who went back on his decisions. It was done.

“Have a good weekend,” Stanley said as she walked out the door.

“You too,” she replied, a reflex more than an honest sentiment.

Alissa would have laughed if she hadn’t lost the ability to feel anything at all. How was she supposed to have a good weekend? Well, pretty much every day was like a weekend now that she didn’t have a job. And the thought of looking for another one wore her out before she even started. If she couldn’t make it at her dream job, what hope did she have for a job anywhere else?

She walked out into the cold Denver winter, the blustery wind chilling her skin.

What was she supposed to do now?

CHAPTERTWO

Dane Taylor jiggled his computer mouse and scooted closer to his desk. He didn’t need to be at the offices ofThe Outlet, the newspaper he was starting in Blueberry Bay, especially since it was the weekend.

But he didn’t have much else to do on a Sunday morning. Most of the town was still asleep and he’d already visited one of the few places that was open, Tidal Wave Coffee. He hadn’t made any friends, not that he had a ton back in his former home, New York City. Most of the time he kept to himself, kept his head down, worked. His Sundays back in the city were spent sitting around in his apartment, lazily making breakfast and reading.

The moment his computer was awake, he turned on some ambient noise to take the edge off the silence of the office. Blueberry Bay was quiet almost all the time, even at his newspaper’s office near the center of town. A few cars slowly drove by, but that was the extent of the noise. The contrast between the little town he’d ended up in and New York City grew more and more stark every day.

There were restaurants and local businesses filling “downtown” as the locals called it, but they opened late and closed early. There wasn’t much of a night scene either, not that he was the type to go out a lot back when he lived in the city. People took their time and made small talk with each other, not thinking about where they had to be. The latter was the hardest adjustment. Some days he felt like he was speed walking when in reality, everyone else was going at his or her own pace.

It was a much humbler new beginning than he’d hoped. If someone asked him to pinpoint where Blueberry Bay was on a map a few months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. It was tucked away in coastal Rhode Island, away from major cities and all the things he knew before. It was almost as foreign as another planet. He never imagined that he’d pay so little for a house that was twice as big as his apartment, or that his biggest day to day problem was trying to make a quick run literally anywhere because everyone liked to have pleasant chats that went on a little too long.

But that didn’t mean he planned to take it easy. He couldn’t turn off his work ethic if he tried.

He sighed, sipping his latte and opening his email. The coffee was great, at least. Tidal Wave Coffee was one of the first places he’d stumbled upon when he moved to Blueberry Bay and he’d become a regular almost instantly. At first he’d been startled by how friendly and willing to talk the young baristas were, but now he was somewhat used to their brand of friendly optimism.

Dane checked, then double checked that everything he had to do for opening day was in order, his heart fluttering in his chest. He had worked in the newspaper business for his entire career, so he wasn’t afraid of making basic mistakes. But there was a lot riding on it for him personally, especially since he was the sole owner of the paper. That was one benefit of his previous job; he’d been paid well enough to start this business.

The thought of his old job made his delicious latte taste bland in his mouth. Even though he’d been gone for months now, the subject of it still unsettled him. He hadn’t liked the way his boss, Alvin, was running things at the paper where he worked in the city—sloppy reporting slipped through the cracks to garner clicks and sales and the writers were worked to the point where they couldn’t produce good work. Alvin, whose work Dane had admired when he first started working there, let everything go as long as it got clicks.

It drove Dane nuts. He spent evening after evening, fixing other writers’ work without being compensated or even acknowledged. Some days he felt like the entire newspaper was resting on his shoulders. He expected the weight of responsibility for the paper’s success a little later when Alvin made him co-owner of the paper, not while he was editor in chief.

And the more he saw of how Alvin ran the paper, the more he hesitated at becoming co-owner. Was he going to end up doing all of the hard work? Were the financials Alvin gave him even accurate, or was Dane going to inherit a huge mess? What if that was the reason why Alvin had chosen Dane—he knew that Dane was going to work as hard as he could no matter what. If the paper was in trouble, Dane would pull it out.

After reading one too many messy articles with a blatant factual error in the second sentence, Dane had snapped. There wasn’t a gentle way to put it. He’d marched into his boss’s office and confronted him about it, loudly enough for the entire floor to hear.

Dane had let him have it, listing every last grievance he had with the direction the publication was taking. He had piled up his complaints in his mind for so long that he could rattle them off one by one without pausing to think.

But Alvin hadn’t been fazed. He’d just sat there, watching Dane with his socked feet up on his desk. When Dane had finished his rant, Alvin had shrugged and said, “Well, okay. Thanks for telling me.”

Even now, the anger at his indifference bubbled up in Dane’s chest so quickly that he had to take a deep breath and close his eyes. In the moment, he had seen red and resigned.

By quitting, he’d blown his chances of becoming a part owner of the paper, a job that could have allowed him to make the changes he wanted. Maybe if he had played his cards right, he could have bought out his old boss’s share of the company and made it his own.

He sighed, running his fingers through his vibrant auburn hair. Had the decision been rash? He’d find out soon ifThe Outletfailed. The thought made his stomach churn. He tried to get in with another big city paper, but news of his explosive exit had traveled fast. No one wanted to touch him, and he doubted that would change if he had a failed paper under his belt on top of his dramatic outburst.

News of his move to Rhode Island had already spread through his circle of former colleagues, including Alvin. An email from him sat in Dane’s inbox, unopened, the notification taunting him. He could have deleted it, sure, but the curiosity was overwhelming. Was Alvin going to tell him how crazy he was? Or was he going to beg for Dane to come back?

Or maybe it wasn’t even about Dane. Did Alvin have news about the old paper? Even though it had been a total mess when he left, Dane cared about his coworkers, as much as they thought he was cranky and mad all the time. He didn’t want them to lose their jobs.

Dane took several gulps of his latte, hoping the caffeine would bolster his confidence and get rid of the bitterness that he couldn’t shake. He switched tabs so his email wouldn’t be right in front of him. Whatever Alvin said, it wasn’t going to make him feel any better.

Blueberry Bay wasn’t his dream home by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a good enough place for a paper. It and the surrounding towns didn’t have a newspaper, making it easy to set up and fill that need. Or at least he hoped it would.

It made sense for him. New York City had so much competition that starting a paper there wouldn’t have been a good business decision, and it wouldn’t have made sense in any city. He had grown up in the Midwest, but as much as he loved his parents, he didn’t want to return there. So, he turned his attention to New England. When he looked up towns where he could restart his life and start a paper, Blueberry Bay checked the boxes. He hoped he’d feel the same way now that the paper was finally launching.

He looked out the window beside his desk, taking in the open field behind the office and the sand dunes far beyond that. Though he was taken by the beauty of it, he missed the rush of stepping onto the street into a flurry of activity the way he had back in New York. It was odd—he’d never felt lonely back in New York, but now he did. It was something about how friendly everyone was, how excited they were to see each other. Friends gathering for coffee, going on walks, all of it.

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