“Try again,” she said, waving the sheets of paper at him with her left hand.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, for one thing, it reads with as much verve as a phone book. For another, you need to learn how to properly use commas.” She sniffed. “We still use the Oxford comma at the paper, dear. Some feel it’s passé, but I prefer it.”
“What’s the Oxford comma?” He frowned.
“There’s a book on proper usage on the shelf in my office at the paper. Strunk and White’s Elements of Style.”
“Anything else?” He folded his arms and tried not to appear petulant, though he was feeling much like a chastised child at that moment. He couldn’t believe she was criticizing his work because she didn’t like the way he used commas.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, there is.” She adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose and glared at him through the lenses. “You say very little about Carly, and what you do say, well, you could be talking about anyone.”
“The article is about Carly.”
“Supposedly. But we get to the end and we don’t know her, and that’s the whole point of the article. We want the people in St. Dennis—the intended readers of the piece—to feel as if they know her.”
He stared at her blankly. “I’m sorry. I don’t get it.”
“I read your article three times. I don’t know what she looks like, I don’t know what her voice sounds like. I don’t know how she feels about the project. Is she enthused, or is she just going through the motions? You did give me some facts, but you didn’t give me Carly Summit. You didn’t even give me a photo. Try again.”
“Mom …”
“Oh, you can do this, Ford. Don’t look at me like that. If I thought you were incapable of writing the article we need the readers to see, I’d take your facts and I’d write the damned thing myself. But I don’t feel up to it, and you are capable, so I suggest you go back to the office and put this thing into shape. You have to get it to Mel in production by tomorrow afternoon, no later. There are a few pictures on my camera if you need to poach one of those. In the future, however, I suggest you take your own.”
He returned to the Gazette office on the second floor of the building on Charles Street—grateful that the paper had its own small parking lot, because the center of town was crawling with tourists—and sat at his mother’s desk. He pulled the article up on the computer screen and reread what he’d earlier written.
“You want more Carly, you’ll get more Carly,” he muttered, and started over again.
He read over the second draft and, trying to be objective, found it lacking something. He tried again.
Did his mother go through this process—this write, rewrite, write, rewrite—every time? He doubted it. She’d been writing for this paper for most of her adult life. She was a professional. Surely once you got the hang of it, the words would flow like water through your hands, wouldn’t they?
At this rate, he’d never get the hang of it. But that was okay, he reminded himself, because this was only a temporary thing. As soon as Grace was up and about, she could have her notebook, laptop, and office back, and he’d never have to go through this tedious exercise again.
He deleted the entire page, and started over. Again.
This time, instead of measuring his every word, he tossed out all his preconceived ideas of how newspaper people wrote and went with his gut. He wrote off the top of his head, his impressions of Carly, the way her eyes lit when she talked about the proposed gallery, and her plans to bring an important exhibit to St. Dennis. He described the gallery itself, the renovations being made to the carriage house, and the largesse of the man who’d donated the property to the community. He reread the piece several times, making minor changes each time, until he felt it was as right as he was going to get it. He scrolled through the photos on his mother’s camera and selected one that he thought might work.
He hit print, and while the copies were being made, he compared the way he’d described Carly in the article—“a cool, competent, petite blonde with ice-blue eyes and the sure confidence born of experience and education”—to the way he really saw her: a smoking-hot blonde with a killer body and the face of an angel. He’d been tempted to slip that in as a joke, but, well, his beta-reader was his mother and he wasn’t sure it would be wise, especially if she didn’t like this version any better than she’d liked the first.
But she did.
“Excellent.” Grace nodded her head when he delivered the finished product later that evening. “Yes, this is it exactly what I wanted.” She looked up at Ford and smiled. “Well done, son. I knew you could do it.”
“Thanks, Mom.” He was more pleased by her praise and more gratified by her smile than he would have expected.
Funny, he thought as he drove back to the Gazette’s office for the second time that day, but you never really outgrow your inner need for that pat on the back from your mom. He’d been away from his home for so long, he’d forgotten how good it felt to have your family—especially a parent—offer you praise and approval. He was whistling as he set up the file as she’d directed, and sent it off to the production department.
His first assignment, and he was a day early.
Before locking up the office and leaving for the inn, Ford printed out his mother’s notes relative to the gallery, the local artists, and the woman to whom St. Dennis was entrusting its art treasures. He’d study up for Tuesday’s interview, and by then, he’d know everything his mother knew about Carly Summit, but somehow, his instincts told him, that wouldn’t be quite enough. Whatever else he wanted to know, he’d have to discover on his own.
Carly couldn’t believe her good fortune. On Monday morning, she’d gone shopping for a bed, mattress and box spring, and one dresser, and ended up buying those pieces plus a sweet love seat that was on sale and would look great in the downstairs bedroom that she planned to use as a study, and a pair of leather club chairs to complement the living room sofa. She figured there was a good chance she could sell them to the next person who rented the house, but if not, there was always the newspaper and its classified ads.
She wondered what the Gazette charged for classified ads.
Thinking about the Gazette felt like license to think about Ford, which led her to thinking about her meeting with him on Saturday, which naturally made her think ahead to their appointment on the following morning.
She’d been so busy packing her things and driving back and forth between the two houses that she’d given little thought to what they’d talk about. She wondered if he was getting direction from Grace or if he was flying by the seat of his pants. A little of both, she suspected.
When she arrived at the carriage house on Tuesday morning, Carly found the HVAC crew already on the job. There was noise and dust and loud music playing, and several workers moving around the area where she normally worked. Ford appeared earlier than she’d anticipated, and he’d looked around at the chaos before trying to speak over the din. “We should probably go somewhere else to talk.”
She motioned for him to follow her outside.