Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(57)
Gina felt her eyes well with tears. Geoff walked to his desk, grabbed a box of tissues, and put it in front of her. Then he broke the silence. “Bruce, I’m thinking out loud. I don’t know if the ideas popping into my head make sense. Suppose I, with Gina’s permission, assign this story to another journalist. Can Gina step back and not be part of it going forward?”
She felt a sick feeling in her stomach. It was the nursing home investigation all over again. She developed the story while someone else would get the credit.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” Brady replied. “Gina is intimately involved with this investigation. She can’t stop knowing what she knows just because another reporter is going to take over.”
Gina felt whipsawed by the turn of events. For the past several weeks she had questioned her reluctance to commit to Ted. She knew she loved him deeply, but committing to spend her whole life with him was a decision that frightened her. Now she was being forced to consider life without Ted. The thought was impossible!
But she needed to work this story. Young women, close to her age, had been victimized, and it was probably still going on. She felt certain that one of them had been murdered. If I walk away, how long will it take them to put someone else on the story? Will whoever they give it to pursue it the way I would have? Will there be more victims who might have been spared? This story is mine, and so is Ted. I will figure out a way to have both, she promised herself.
“I’ve made my decision,” she said, surprised by the steely resolve in her voice. “I’ll break if off with Ted.” Looking at Geoff, she continued, “This is my story. I want to see it through.”
It was Geoff who broke the silence. “All right, Gina. With Cathy Ryan dead and Meg Williamson reluctant to talk to you, where are you going next?”
“I have one more card to play with Williamson,” she said. “Meg doesn’t know that her friend Cathy Ryan was murdered.”
61
“Shell-shocked” would have been a good word to describe Gina as she walked from the Empire offices and made her way to the subway. Operating on automatic pilot, she inserted her monthly pass and the gates flew open. She stared without seeing out the window of the train, woodenly trudged up the steps at her stop, and walked to her apartment. All that time in Nepal and Aruba and on the flights, she had agonized about what to say to Ted, how to respond to his question. Little did she know that Ted would get his answer in an email or text with the wording dictated by, of all people, a lawyer.
She absently acknowledged the doorman’s greeting, but then stopped. Here’s as good a place to start as any, she thought to herself.
“Miguel, I’m not seeing my friend Ted anymore. If he comes over, please don’t send him up. And if he calls, please don’t say whether I’m home or out.” Even as the words came out of her mouth, they sounded strange to her ears.
“Oh, Miss Gina, I’m so sorry to hear that. You and Mr. Ted were very simpatico together. Of course I will give him no information about you.”
Inside her apartment she numbly dropped her bag on the counter. It was approaching lunchtime, but she wasn’t the slightest bit hungry. The thought of food made her think of the dinner she would not have. She dialed the restaurant and canceled the reservation. “Thank you so much for letting us know,” the man said in accented English. If only Ted would take the news as well as the restaurant had, she thought as she hung up the phone.
“There’s got to be a better way to do this,” she said out loud as she opened her computer. She started by typing the lawyer’s words as she recalled them. “Dear Ted, I’ve chosen to go in a different direction. Goodbye.”
Gina stared at what she had typed. These were the lawyer’s words except for the “Dear Ted.” I’m the one who’s supposedly the professional writer, she thought. I’ve got to be able to do better than that.
It was small consolation that the hurt she was about to administer was for Ted’s own good. Hurt was hurt, no matter what the intent. If the situation were reversed, what would be less painful? Ted telling her it was over and not providing a reason or saying it was over because someone else had entered the picture?
She began typing again. “Dear Ted, I’m sorry to say this in an email. I’ve met someone else and I want—” She deleted “want” and replaced it with “need”—“I need to go in a different direction. Goodbye.”
She read and reread what she had written and shook her head. This version raised as many questions as it answered. When did she meet someone else? Do you change your whole life around after meeting someone in the next seat on an airplane or after a single conversation in a bar? No, you wouldn’t jeopardize what you have unless you were reasonably certain that the new situation offered the opportunity for a greater happiness. You’d only know that if you’d seen the new person several times, and after each meeting found yourself wanting more.
If I can think of this, so will Ted. No matter what I tell him—I’m not telling him anything in the email—he’ll believe I was cheating on him, cheating on him the whole time I was asking him to be patient.
Gina exhaled, conceding that there was no way to conclude this in anything resembling a soft landing. She began a new email. “Ted, I’ve chosen to go in a different direction. Goodbye. Gina.”