The Good Byline

by Jill Orr

  “I’m sor—”

  “Riley?”

  I looked up. It was Mr. Monroe, my old social studies teacher. “Oh, hi, Mr. Monroe.”

  “Nuh-uh.” He wagged a finger at me. “Kevin, remember? I’m not your teacher anymore.”

  I laughed. “Sorry, Kevin.”

  “Everything okay?” He nodded toward the sheriff’s office.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I was just…um, I just went by to say hi to Carl.”

  “Good. Would hate to think you’re in some kind of trouble with the law,” he said, giving me a playful wink. Mr. Monroe had been my favorite teacher back in middle school. He was the one who actually encouraged Jordan and me to write our Obit Girl column. He was fresh out of college and full of enthusiasm, unlike so many of our other teachers. He didn’t treat us like we were just kids. He made us feel smart and capable. But what we didn’t realize was that teaching had been merely a gap year for him while he took the LSAT and saved money. Everyone was sad to see him leave teaching, but it had obviously been the right move, because now he was the prosecuting attorney for all of Tuttle County.

  “Um,” I said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ears, “did you hear about Jordan James?”

  “Yes, such a shame.” He shook his head. “She was a great girl.”

  “Yeah, she was,” I agreed. “Actually, Mrs. James asked me to help put her obituary together.”

  A sad smile spread across his face and I knew he was remembering our column. “I’m glad,” he said. “You gals were so close.”

  My face reddened. “Actually, we hadn’t spoken in years.”

  “You’re kidding? You two were so tight back in the day.”

  “Yeah, well, you know…” I trailed off.

  “She was a reporter for the Times, right?”

  The sun shone through the branches of a large Eastern red cedar tree. I put a hand up to shield my eyes. “She was.” I’m not sure why, maybe it was because he was part of the criminal justice system in Tuttle Corner or because Jordan was our common ground, but I decided to take a chance. “I’ve actually been talking with a reporter that Jordan worked with over at the Times, and, well, this is going to sound kind of crazy, but he thinks—well, he and I both kind of think—that it’s possible that Jordan’s death wasn’t a suicide.”

  Something on his face changed, his eyes maybe. He looked at me with a new expression, one that seemed awfully close to pity. “Riley,” he said slowly, “I know it’s natural to want to believe that the people we love wouldn’t leave us on purpose.”

  I felt humiliation swell inside my chest. “It’s not just me—it’s this reporter, Will Holman, too! See, she had this meeting set up with—”

  “Will Holman is…eccentric,” he said carefully. “He’s known for having some pretty wild conspiracy theories. His paranoia means he occasionally gets lucky uncovering stories, but I don’t know if I’d throw in with him on this one.”

  “It’s just that it seems so unlike Jordan to kill herself.”

  “But you said you didn’t really know her anymore, didn’t you?”

  My cheeks felt hot. “I guess.”

  “And,” his voice became softer, as if he wanted to cushion the effect of his words, “no one can blame you for being extra sensitive to suicides.” Kevin knew my granddad and had reached out to me after I wrote the op-ed years ago. I guess he, like everyone else in town, still saw me as Riley Bless-Her-Heart.

  I looked down.

  “Listen,” he said, “sometimes we feel the need to come up with alternatives when we don’t like the reality.” Alternatives. There was that word again. “You remember Kübler-Ross from school, right? Denial is the first stage of grief and all that?”

  I nodded. Hadn’t my mom said nearly the same thing to me the other night? Was it possible I’d allowed Holman’s paranoia to infect my judgment? Denial did seem a far more plausible explanation than murder.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, “maybe you’re right.”

  “I know I am.” He put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Unfortunately, I see a lot of this stuff in my line of work.”

  CHAPTER 13

  When I got to the library, Wright and Constance Gladstone were walking up the porch steps. Constance held onto Wright’s arm with one hand and carried her cloth bag full of returns with the other. I knew that inside of thirty minutes, they’d be at my checkout counter with this week’s picks ready to go. They never said much more than the usual pleasantries, never asked for book recommendations or where things were located. They’d been coming to the Tuttle Corner Library for more than a quarter of a century, and they didn’t need my help. Though I’d noticed in recent months, Constance’s hand shook a little when she handed me her card.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone.”

  “Afternoon, Riley,” Mr. Gladstone said. “Just getting in, are we?”

  “I’m working till close tonight,” I said, holding the door open for them. “Just let me know if I can help you find anything.”

  They both smiled at me, as if to say, We know this library better than you, sweetie. They had the kind of smiles that implied the word “sweetie.”

  Tabitha gave me an update on the morning before rushing out to meet Thad at the florist to start thinking about “motifs” for their upcoming wedding. She also told me Dr. H hadn’t been in but had called to say he’d be working at his office at Cardwell College if we needed him.

  I pulled out my phone to check if Regina H had emailed anything about Ajay257, and saw I’d missed a call from Ryan.

  “Hey, Riles,” Ryan’s voice cooed into my voicemail. “Just calling to tell you I miss you. Sorry ’bout the other day. Love ya.” He sounded fuzzy again. “Okay. That’s all. Just wanted to let you know I was thinkin’ ’bout chu. Love you, baby. Bye.”

  It was the first time since Ridley, the bizarro-me, came on the scene that I’d gotten one of those late-night messages, though there had been a handful over the months since he’d been gone. I was a mixture of angry, annoyed, delighted, and hopeful. And I hated myself for feeling so conflicted.

  It was still light out when I locked up at eight. The heat of summer was a small price to pay for the extra daylight. Even working late didn’t seem so bad if the sun was still shining when I was finished. It was a classic summer night in Tuttle. The kind where Ryan and I would have gone out to the lake to his family’s land, him with his rod and tackle box and me with a book. We’d sit for hours in his father’s fishing boat with the green peeling paint, a cooler filled with Cokes and pimento cheese sandwiches between us. There was something so comfortable about being with someone you can be silent with, no pretending to be someone you’re not, no stress over goodbye kisses or saying the wrong thing. It may not be the most exciting kind of companionship, but at least it wasn’t stressful. Or humiliating.

  I walked past the city building, Memorial Park, and the fire station. A breeze blew by, carrying on it the sweet, sultry scent from the many harlequin glory bower trees that populated the park. As soon as the fragrance hit me, it brought an almost visceral longing for those summer nights of years past, when my life seemed anchored, fully plotted, and not the big ball of uncertainty it had become.

  Everything seemed to have gone in a slow-motion downward spiral since Granddaddy’s death. That op-ed turned me into an object of pity around town, and my bitterness against Flick and the system turned me off of wanting a career in journalism. I changed majors, got my degree in English, and waited for Ryan to pop a ring on my finger. But then he left, too. I was living a life I’d lost control over somehow, treading water in a self-designed purgatory.

  I was just passing the sheriff’s department when I looked into the parking lot and saw the familiar outline of a man. Ajay? What was Ajay doing talking to Joe Tackett? Even though he probably thought I was a complete lunatic, I felt it was my duty to warn him about Sheriff Tackett. I walked directly toward the pair, who was, apparently, deep in conversation.

&n
bsp; “Riley?” Ajay said.

  “Riley.” Tackett rolled his eyes.

  “Is everything okay?” I ignored Tackett and looked straight at Ajay.

  “I’ll be in touch,” Tackett said, as they shook hands. Then, as he passed me on his way back inside he whispered, “Maybe you’re not as lonely as I thought?”

  “I hope you don’t mind that I stopped,” I said once Tackett was gone. “I was just so surprised to see you here. In Tuttle Corner. Again.” A nervous giggle erupted from my throat.

  “I do some consulting for the department,” Ajay said. He was wearing sunglasses, so his expression was impossible to read.

  I smoothed down the front of my skirt for something to do with my hands. “Oh, well, um, when I saw you here I thought, ‘It’s perfect,’ because I’ve been meaning to call you to apologize.”

  A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. He put his hands into his pockets as if to say Go on, then.

  “I know you must think I am a total mess,” I began. “And you might be right!” I fake-giggled again with all the smoothness of a Muppet. “Anyway, I just wanted to say I’m sorry for lying about the effect my friend’s death had on me. And for misrepresenting my love for thrill rides. And beer. And hot dogs. And also for kind of freaking out on you the other day at lunch. And then for kissing you and running away.…”

  “Is that all?” Ajay asked.

  I swept my bangs out of my eyes so I could look at him. “Um, well, yes. I think so.”

  “So you didn’t stop in here to ask me out on a date?”

  I froze. I felt heat flood my cheeks. “No! I do not ask men out on dates, I’ll have you know. I mean, I guess I did suggest we have lunch the other day, but that was just more in the way of an apolo—”

  His face broke out into a wide smile. Oh. He was kidding.

  Ajay took off his sunglasses and his dark eyes met mine. “You don’t have to apologize,” he said. “Except for leaving before giving me a chance to respond.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  He waved his hand. “Nah, it’s nothing. I’ve actually been meaning to call you.” I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not, but it was nice of him to say it. “I’ve just been busy.”

  “Well, I’m glad you were here so we could, um, clear that up. From the other day, I mean.”

  “Me too.”

  We stood in the awkward silence. I wasn’t sure what to say next. We weren’t exactly friends, but we weren’t exactly not friends either. Thankfully, before I could say anything stupid, Ajay spoke up.

  “This may sound crazy, but do you want to give it another try? We could start over—clean slate and all?”

  I smiled; the answer was obvious. “And this time, I promise: no more lies.”

  Ajay smiled back. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  CHAPTER 14

  It didn’t take long to get to my house in his zippy little BMW convertible. He parked his car behind mine in the driveway. We walked inside and I told him to make himself at home while I went back into the bedroom to change clothes. We planned to go out for dinner, and I wanted to put on something less librarian-y.

  “I love the moldings in here,” he called from the living room. “And this woodwork is gorgeous.” He was right. The woodwork in the house was especially well done. The house was a Craftsman-style, with a low-pitched gabled roof and exposed beams on the inside. All of the woodwork was original and had been lovingly restored by my granddad during the years he lived here. This house was like his second son; I’d been so touched that he’d left it to me in his will. And the home reflected his personal style: no nonsense, no frills, utterly practical in every way. I’d left things mostly as he’d had them, except for buying an oversize sofa for the living room and hanging curtains in the bedrooms. My mother was always urging me to redecorate or paint, but it felt like I’d be erasing a little of him if I did. I liked that it was almost exactly as it had been when he lived here.

  “Thanks,” I said loudly from my small room. “In the interest of total honesty: I didn’t buy it. My granddad left it to me when he passed.”

  I reached for the gray jeans I’d bought because I saw Selena Gomez wearing them on some magazine cover. Forget it, I thought. It’s too hot to try to be cool tonight. I grabbed a cantaloupe-colored fit-’n-flare dress and threw it on, pulled my hair into a ponytail, fluffed my bangs, freshened my lip gloss, and was good to go.

  I came out into the living room, slightly out of breath from rushing, to find Ajay looking at my bookshelf. It was my favorite thing in the whole house—the whole world maybe. Granddaddy had a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf built along the entire back wall of the living room, the kind with one of those rolling ladders. It was crammed with every sort of book, from Molière to John Grisham.

  “Impressive,” Ajay said.

  “Thanks. I’ve been adding to my granddad’s collection ever since I moved in.”

  Ajay raised a dark eyebrow and said, “I wasn’t talking about the books.”

  I had nearly forgotten what a good date was like. No, not just a good date. A great date. And it was safe to say that Ajay and I had a great date that night. First we went over to James Madison’s Fish Shack where we drank themed cocktails (which is what one must do at a place called James Madison’s Fish Shack). Ajay ordered the Revolutionary Rum Runner, and I the Star Spangled Sipper, a combination of vodka, pineapple juice, lemonade, club soda, and a maraschino cherry. We split an order of cornbread-coated shrimp and a basket of potato skins.

  After dinner, we left Ajay’s car at the dock by the restaurant and wandered through town, taking advantage of the slightly cooler evening temperatures. It was fully dark, but the city had installed those Victorian-looking black street lamps along the path through Memorial Park a few years earlier, so we had a soft light to stroll by. Ajay told me about his childhood in a small town in Massachusetts and how he couldn’t wait to leave it. His parents were both from India, and they had moved there for his mother’s job as a professor of engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His father was a freelance software developer, so he could work from anywhere. His parents loved their little town, but Ajay, not so much. He was the only non-white kid at his high school, and he said that wasn’t so much difficult as weird.

  “Diversity in our town meant having both Catholic and Protestant kids attend the same school. They didn’t know what to do with a non-practicing Hindu.” He laughed. “I sort of felt like an outsider, even though I had friends and stuff. I always wanted to live in a place with more people who looked like me.”

  “And now you’ve landed in the cultural melting pot of Tuttle County!”

  “Funny, right? But I went to college and lived in Jersey for almost ten years, where there were people of every kind of ethnic and cultural background you could think of, and you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I missed living in a small town. No one was more surprised than me—but I honestly like the slower pace of small towns.”

  That made me smile. “Me too. Is that why you left?”

  Ajay paused and seemed to be considering what to say next. “No.” It was a surprisingly curt answer from him, and I wasn’t sure how to take it.

  He must have sensed my reaction because he added, “It’s complicated. But I left because I had to.”

  “That sounds ominous,” I said, curious.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” His eyes hardened for a fraction of a second before he shook it off. “But it all worked out. I had a good opportunity here, and so far, so good.”

  I had the feeling that there was more to his story, but I wasn’t going to interrogate him. Even full disclosure had its limits on first (or even third) dates.

  “I’ve been talking too much,” he said. “Tell me more about you. What do you do for fun?”

  “Um.…” I knew we were supposed to be honest, but saying I read the obituaries from eight different papers, including two from the UK, every morning seemed lik
e it might be a turnoff.

  “What?” he said, obviously sensing I was hesitating for a reason. “You can tell me. I won’t judge, I promise.”

  I don’t know if I was lulled into a sense of safety because of the low light or the intermittent whiffs of his cologne, but I decided I trusted him enough to open up. Just a little.

  “Obituaries? Really?” he asked after I’d told him.

  “Yeah.”

  “You like reading about dead people.”

  “That’s really an oversimplification,” I corrected. “See, an obituary—a well-written one anyway—is all about life, not death. You can learn so much about human nature by reading about people’s legacies. And I’m not just talking about famous people, either. A well-done obit on Joe Schmoe from Harrisburg can be every bit as interesting as reading about Mao Tse-tung.”

  “Really?” He didn’t look convinced. “I think it’d be sad. Reading about all those people who died.”

  There was so much I could say on the subject, so much I wanted to say. About how obituaries are all about what people leave behind, how their lives affected the people around them, about the power and privilege of getting to be the one who picks out which things, of all the millions of things people do in a lifetime, best encapsulate their lives. But why tell him when I could show him?

  “When we get back to my house, I’ll show you something that’ll change your mind.”

  Ajay waggled his eyebrows. “Sounds interesting.”

  I hit him on the arm. “I said change your mind, not blow it.”

  “Wow.” He gave a long, low whistle. “You are full of surprises, Miss Ellison.”

  I had to admit I was even surprising myself. I wasn’t normally this flirtatious, or flirtatious at all, but something about this kind of perfect summer night made everything sparkle with possibility. Even me.

  CHAPTER 15

  We pulled into my driveway at a half past ten. I turned to face him. “I’m going to ask you inside, but since the theme of the evening is honesty, I feel like I should tell you this isn’t an invitation to spend the night or anything.”