Stay Tuned

Chapter 55

“Hey, good morning, Drew. It’s Melissa.” I held the phone to my ear, and waited until Drew finished his conversation with someone else.

I tried to rub the Monday morning sleep out of my eyes. The weekend had simply been draining. My talk with Chris about anchoring and then telling him about Rick and the pregnancy test had worn me out. I was still reeling from his confession about Tyler and quitting his job. Chris and I had so much to work on.

The rest of the weekend had been consumed with Mother, making sure she was okay, and getting things settled at the nursing home. We had an appointment with her doctor later in the week. It was all going to work out. Somehow.

And now I had to ask for what I wanted.

Drew came back on the line. “What’s up?”

“Hey, could I have a few minutes of your time today?” I asked. “In person?”

“Just a sec,” Drew snapped. He barked orders to one of the reporters. “Mel, it’s not Alyssa again, is it? Please tell me no.”

“No, Drew. It’s not her.”

The static from the scanner crackled in the background.

“All right, then come in a little early. Hang on.” Drew hummed and typed something on a keyboard.

“Say, around noon?”

“Sounds good.”

Drew slammed the phone down, already engrossed in another conversation.

“Ouch!” I said out loud. My ears were still ringing as I came down the stairs. I stopped at the door to Chris’s office and he looked up from the screen of his laptop.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Chris leaned back in his chair.

“Nothing,” I replied, rubbing at my temples. “I made an appointment to see Drew around noon.”
 
“Good. I can’t wait to hear what he says.” Chris gave me a half-smile, then looked back to the computer screen. He tapped his pencil furiously and scanned notes he had jotted on a piece of paper.

“I just got off an interesting call myself. Macon Financial’s attorneys.” Chris sat back in his chair and swiveled it from side to side. “From the sound of it, they’re not happy. They kept asking if I was going to take ‘legal action’ against Tyler and if I had I contacted my attorney.”

“And?”

Chris shrugged. “I didn’t tell them anything.”

“Well, what did they say?” I sat down, my full attention on Chris.

“The guy asked if I was certain I wanted to resign. He alluded my job was being held open in case I changed my mind. And that the ‘situation’ was being corrected, whatever that means.”

Chris leaned forward and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Um, there was something asked about my pain and suffering. Did my treatment affect my work? Did I know about Tyler’s involvement with anyone else? Namely, a client in Atlanta? Blah, blah, blah. EEOC laws. What did I know about those? Questions like that.”

I let my head fall to the side of the wing-tipped chair. “What do you think they want? To make a settlement?”

“It’s possible.” Chris replied with a tinge of hope. “Wouldn’t that be something? What we could do with that money? I could open my own business, we could travel.”

In my heart, I wanted to believe him. My head was not so sure.

“Sure,” I answered, my mind in a million different places. “It would be something.”

That is, if all you’ve told me about Tyler is all true…

He started scribbling calculations on a Post-it note.

“Babe,” I interrupted. I had to say something. It was time that I put a stop to our casual reliance on small yellow squares to communicate everything and anything.

Chris stopped writing and raised his eyes to meet mine. “Hey.”

“Promise me, in the future, you’ll just call,” I said. “Or, talk to me in person. Or just be creative. Smoke signals, a message in a bottle?”

My husband wrinkled his brow. “Come again?”

“The Post-its.”

“Ah,” he looked down at the thick pad of yellow squares. “So, don’t use these?”

“Well, not never,” I smiled. “Just try and talk to me first.”

“What if,” Chris asked with a sly smile, “I have to leave you a note because you’re on an assignment in South America and your cell phone is dead, e-mail is down, and no one’s at the station? Say the president calls and wants to meet with me. He’s sending Air Force One and I have to tell you where I am.”

I crossed my arms. “At least use a different color.”

Chris grinned. “How about pink?”