When Day Breaks (14 page)

B
ack at the Broadcast Center, Eliza went to her office to work on her script while Annabelle went downstairs to screen the tapes they’d shot at the Cloisters. As Eliza stared at her blank computer monitor, searching for inspiration on how to begin her narration, Janie galloped around the office on the unicorn-headed hobby horse purchased at the Cloisters gift shop.

Paige appeared at the door. “Want me to take Janie down to the cafeteria for something to eat?” she asked.

“She’s really eaten enough junk this afternoon,” said Eliza. “But I
would
really appreciate it if you found something else for her to do while I get this script written.”

“Come on, Janie,” said Paige, holding her hand out to the little girl. “Let’s see if the director will let you sit in your mommy’s chair and show you how you look on TV.”

Twenty minutes later Eliza was more than halfway through her script when she heard a man clear his throat. She looked up to see Mack McBride standing in the doorway.

“May I come in?” he asked.

“Sure,” she answered. “Take a seat. I’m just working on a script for your show tonight.”

Mack sat in the chair on the other side of Eliza’s desk, leaned back, crossed his legs, and smiled. “That has a nice ring, doesn’t it?
You
doing a piece for
my
broadcast. I like that.”

“Don’t get too used to it, my friend.” Eliza smiled back.

“
Am
I your friend, Eliza?”

Eliza looked away, picking up a paper clip from the tray on her desk. “Of course you’re my friend,” she said. “We’re adults. What happened between us is ancient history.”

“Not so ancient,” said Mack. “And it’s not what happened between us that I regret. What we had between us was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It’s what happened when we were apart that I regret. You don’t know how much I wish we could go back to the way things were, Eliza.”

Eliza pulled at the metal clip, straightening it out, but she remained silent.

“I don’t know how many times I can tell you how sorry I am, Eliza,” he said. “Won’t you please forgive me?”

“It’s complicated, Mack,” she said softly.

Mack leaned forward. “Not really, Eliza. It’s not that complicated at all. I fell in love with you when we were here in New York together. When I got to London, I got drunk one night and slept with somebody else. It was a big mistake. I would do anything in the world to take it back, but I can’t. I’ve lost you. End of story.”

“I hate that story, Mack.”

“I hate it, too, Eliza. But let’s edit it. We can change the ending.”

Mack rose from his chair, walked around the desk, took Eliza’s hand, and guided her to her feet.

“Look, I know you don’t want to trust me anymore,” he said as he gazed into her eyes. “I know I’ve hurt you, and I hate myself for it. But I promise I will never do anything like that again.”

Eliza’s instincts told her that Mack meant everything he was saying, but her brain told her to beware. She didn’t ever want to experience again the tearful, sleepless nights and excruciating disappointment and hurt she’d felt when she found out that Mack had been unfaithful. She couldn’t afford to go through that again. She had a daughter who depended on her and a demanding job that required she be focused and mentally healthy and on top of things. She had to take care of herself. It would be stupid to risk getting involved with a man who was capable of hurting her the way Mack had.

Getting involved with Mack again had danger written all over it. Yet in the months he’d been gone, she’d missed him so. “I guess it wouldn’t do any harm to just have dinner together,” she said, surprised at her own words.

Mack’s eyes lit up. “Great. Tonight?”

“No, I can’t tonight,” said Eliza. “I want to get Janie home.”

“Well, I’m leaving to go back to London on Tuesday morning,” said Mack.

“All right, then. Tomorrow night, after the broadcast,” said Eliza, knowing she was taking a risk, past being able to resist anymore.

W
hile the roast beef sat in the oven and got drier by the minute, Faith waited for Todd to come home. The over-thirty baseball team had obviously stopped for a couple of beers after the game.

“When are we eating, Mom?” asked Ben.

“I’m hungry,” whined Brendan.

“We’re going to eat as soon as I mash the potatoes,” she said.

Faith poured herself a glass of burgundy before turning on the electric mixer and running the rotating blades through the boiled potatoes. She fumed as she added warm milk and butter and muttered to herself as she scooped the creamy mixture out of the bowl and onto the boys’ plates.

“What are you saying, Mom?” asked Brendan. “I can’t hear you.”

“She said a bad thing, Brendan,” answered Ben. “How come you can say ‘son of a bitch,’ Mom, and we’re not supposed to?”

“That’s enough, Ben,” said Faith. “Now, sit down and eat.”

“Without Daddy?” asked Brendan.

“Yes, without Daddy,” said Faith. “In fact, since Daddy isn’t here, do you guys want to eat upstairs in your room and watch television?”

The boys looked at her with eyes wide. She was always nagging them about having to eat at the kitchen or dining room table, and now she was actually suggesting that they go eat in front of the TV. They weren’t about to question the opportunity.

As soon as the boys were settled with their trays, Faith went back downstairs and snapped on the television set just in time to see Eliza Blake’s report on
The KEY Evening Headlines.
She listened as Stuart Whitaker described the multimillion-dollar contribution he wanted to make to build a memorial garden for Constance at the Cloisters.

Even in death, fame would follow Constance.

Faith got up and went into the kitchen to pour herself another glass of wine. This Stuart Whitaker character could do whatever he wanted with his money, but only she could decide where Constance would be buried.

A
fter spending the better part of Sunday afternoon in the
KTA
studio rehearsing her debut on the next morning’s show, Lauren Adams and Linus Nazareth sat on the sofa and watched
The KEY Evening Headlines
together in the executive producer’s office.

“So Eliza Blake has another scoop,” Linus growled when the broadcast was over. “Last night Eliza told the world about the dead dog. And now she’s reporting about this boyfriend of Constance’s donating a cool twenty million so he can have a pretty little resting place for her.” Linus pounded the top of his thigh. “This should be
our
story.
KTA
’s story. Eliza’s
Evening Headlines
is breaking the news, instead of us.”

“Try to stay calm, Linus. If
you
lose it,
I’m
going to lose it.” Lauren stroked his arm. “It’s the weekend, honey. Tomorrow morning is what really counts. Everyone will be watching the first broadcast without Constance.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. The ratings are going to be off the charts,” Linus conceded. “But just the same, I want
KTA
to be out in front with this story.”

“Me, too,” said Lauren, “but we’ve just lost two of our best people and actually handed them on a silver platter to Eliza and the
Evening Headlines.
How smart was that?”

Linus looked at her, incredulous. “Last night you were crying about the miserable job Annabelle Murphy did for you and the fact that B.J. D’Elia gave important information to Eliza instead of you. You were practically raving about looking incompetent on the air.”

“I know,” said Lauren. “And I’m still furious at those two, but maybe I shouldn’t have been so hard on them yesterday. Maybe I’d get better results if I wasn’t such a bitch. You know the old saying, ‘You can catch more flies with honey…’”

“Tough,” Linus hissed. “There is absolutely no excuse for either of them to have shown you anything but the loyalty and professionalism you deserve. Their job is to help gather all the elements to tell the story and to make you look good. They failed. They’re out.”

“All right, Linus. You’re the boss. You’ve been at this a lot longer than I have, but I’m really worried.” Lauren put her head on his shoulder.

“Hey,” said Linus, stroking her hair. “Stop it. You have to be confident and sure of yourself. If you aren’t, the audience will smell it.”

“You’re right.” Lauren dabbed at her eyes. “The pressure and all.”

“You just have to relax, be yourself, and trust me,” said Linus. “I made Constance the star she was, and I can do it for you, too, baby.”

“Please, Linus, don’t call me ‘baby.’ And don’t treat me like one. You can only do so much for me, and we both know it. At the end of the day—or rather the morning—I’m the one who’s out there, I’m the one who’ll be judged. The pressure is on
me.
” Lauren hurled a cushion across the office.

“This is normal, Lauren. Good luck, even,” said Linus. “I remember Constance freaking out the night before she took over for Eliza.”

“Did you comfort Constance like this, too?” asked Lauren.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Lauren. Of course not. There was nothing between Constance and me like there is between us. I reassured her, but I didn’t take her in my arms.”

Linus leaned over to kiss her, but Lauren pulled away, pouting. There was a knock at the office door. If the senior producer was surprised to see the executive producer and the new host sitting close together on the couch, or thought it inappropriate, Dominick O’Donnell didn’t show it.

“What is it, Dom?” asked Linus.

“I just want to run this past you, even though I’m fairly certain what your response will be.”

“Go ahead.”

“We passed on it when his publicist pitched it a few weeks ago, but Jason Vaughan’s publisher is putting a full-court press on getting him on television this week. Remember? He’s the guy Constance exposed as a fraud?”

“Yeah, I remember,” said Linus, stifling a yawn.

“Well, he takes some real swipes at Constance in this new book of his. Says Constance and the media ruined his life.”

“And I would want to give him
publicity
? Why?” Linus asked, rising from the couch and fetching his jacket from the back of his chair.

“That’s what I thought,” said Dominick. He turned and closed the door behind him.

L
ike more than 40 million other Americans, Eliza switched back and forth between
KEY to America
and
Daybreak
on Monday morning, eager to watch Lauren Adams’s debut as
KTA
host and see how the team at
Daybreak
was reacting to the loss of the woman who’d been hired to lead their network to morning-television supremacy. Both programs, predictably, led with the Constance Young story. In fact, almost the entire first half hour was devoted to the subject. In case anyone had been living under a rock all weekend, every single bit of information that had been reported over the last two days was repeated, repackaged, and regurgitated.

To Eliza, Lauren Adams was visibly nervous. She made her share of mistakes, at times looking into the wrong camera, stumbling on a few words, missing a couple of cues. But Eliza suspected that none of the media critics were going to judge Lauren too harshly. After what had happened to Constance, it was understandable that Lauren would be rattled. It was a tough way to start a new job. Eliza found herself feeling sympathy for Lauren, and she thought the viewing public might, too. If Lauren handled herself well in these first days after Constance’s death, if she could strike the right balance between authoritative newsperson and caring human being, she had the potential for attracting and establishing some loyal viewers.

“I want to watch SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Janie’s voice pulled Eliza back to the task at hand, getting her daughter out to school for the day. Janie sat at the kitchen table, halfheartedly eating the bowl of Cheerios that Mrs. Garcia had fixed for her.

“Mommy has to watch this for work, sweetheart. You know that. Now, eat your breakfast.”

Janie just stared down at the cereal bowl.

“Janie, come on now.” Eliza’s voice was sterner.

With tears in her eyes and a protruding lower lip, the little girl looked up at her mother. Eliza snapped off the television set, bent down, and wrapped her arms around her child.

“Oh, sweetheart, what are you crying about? I wasn’t yelling at you, Janie. I just want you to finish your breakfast so you can have a good day at school.”

Janie sniffled. “I’m not crying about that.”

“Then what’s bothering you?”

Janie buried her face against her mother’s chest. Eliza stroked the child’s dark hair.

“What is it, Janie?”

“I don’t like what’s on TV. I don’t like watching the lady who died. I don’t want you to die, Mommy.”

Eliza closed her eyes and pulled her daughter closer. What could she possibly have been thinking, having the television on with all the coverage of Constance’s death? There were a half dozen other television sets in the house, and she certainly shouldn’t be watching the one in the kitchen with Janie sitting right there. And what about dragging Janie with her to the Cloisters and back to the Broadcast Center yesterday while she worked on her story? That had been a thoughtless mistake, too.

Janie was bright, and her little eyes and ears missed nothing. To her this wasn’t an impersonal, anonymous story on the news. Constance worked in the same building as her mommy. Constance Young was on television just like her mommy. Constance even had the job her mommy used to have. If something had happened to Constance, something could happen to her mommy. Janie was already missing one parent. Of course she’d be terrified of losing the other one.

Eliza whispered, trying to soothe the child, “Oh, my sweet angel, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. Nothing is going to happen to me.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. How could I ever leave you? I love you more than anything in the whole wide world. You know that, don’t you?”

Janie nodded. “I know, but you told me Daddy loved me, too—and he left me.”

Here it was. The conversation that Eliza had known would come someday. The talk she’d tried to prepare herself for but had always dreaded. Janie had never known a world with her father in it. In her baby and toddler years, she had developed normally. The first word, the first step, the first birthday, the first day at nursery school, even the first day of kindergarten—Janie had marked all those milestones without any demonstrable sign that she felt the absence of a father. Yes, she remarked a few times that her playmates had daddies, but she’d always seemed to accept the fact that she didn’t—and this was just the way life was. This morning was the first time that Janie had expressed, in her way, the confusion, loss, and sense of abandonment she must be experiencing as she came to understand that her father would never, ever be there, and the utter terror at the thought of losing her other parent and being left alone in the world.

“He didn’t want to, Janie. He wanted to be with you very much. He tried as hard as he could to stay in this world, mostly because he wanted to see you. But I guess God had other plans for Daddy.”

Janie wiped her nose against her mother’s bathrobe. “What kind of plans?”

“I’m not really sure, sweetheart. I’m going to ask God that question when I see him. But I do know for certain that a big part of God’s plan for Daddy while he was in this world was to be your father. That was the most important thing Daddy ever did, and I know he felt that way about it.”

“You do?” Janie was hanging on every one of her mother’s words.

“Mm-hmm.” Eliza kissed Janie’s forehead. “One of the last things he said to me was that he was so happy to know that you would be coming soon. He said it made him feel like he was really contributing something wonderful to the world.”

“What’s ‘contributing’?” asked Janie.

“Giving. When you contribute something, you give it.”

Janie considered the explanation. “Like a present?”

Eliza nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. You are my and daddy’s present to the world, Janie.”

The child smiled up at her mother. Then Janie pulled away and turned her attention to the bowl of soggy Cheerios. Eliza watched her daughter eat, wondering if she’d said the right things, praying that she had, certain that this would not be the last time the subject would come up, knowing that she had the sacred responsibility of raising this child and making sure Janie was never an orphan.