“And they must agree to allow us time to ourselves.”

“A promise,” Auburn said.

“Forgive me, Mrs. Linworth,” Zeke Brennan said, “but I’m afraid I have a previous engagement.”

“Another time, then, Mr. Brennan. And you, Kyle?”

“All right,” Kyle said. “Yes, thank you-what time shall I be there?”

“Let’s say seven. No need to dress up-would that be all right with you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Fine. Auburn can give you a lift from your hotel, and I’ll have my driver bring you home whenever you decide to leave. I’ll see you all at seven.”

She rose, and the men did as well. She left the room.

Kyle stared after her.

Auburn laughed. “Lillian has always been a force to be reckoned with, Kyle.”

Kyle smiled. “I can see that.” He turned to Warren and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so rude to you. Your offer is very generous, but I’m just not comfortable taking it.”

Warren shrugged. “I won’t force it on you, but I’d appreciate it if you’d give yourself a few days to decide anything definite.” He raised his hands, palms out, as if in surrender. “I won’t say more about it unless you tell me you want to talk about it again.”

“All right. I’ll think about it, but I don’t want you to get your hopes up. Deal?”

“Deal. See you this evening.”

Zeke Brennan showed Kyle out.

When they had left the room, Warren sat down with a sigh. “Thank God Lillian was here, or I don’t think he’d have anything more to do with us.”

“Yes,” Auburn said. “And if I were you, Warren, I’d search through your mother’s scrapbooks to see if she took any photos of Estelle. It won’t hurt for you to have a few offerings of your own.”

The moment she was home, Lillian called Helen Corrigan.

“Swanie, it’s Lil. Look, I have an emergency on my hands and I need your help.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, I just need you to see someone. Long story, which I’ll tell you this evening. You’re coming to dinner here at seven-dress casually. And bring Conn-warn him this is not for the newspaper, all right?”

“Okay, Miss Mysterious.”

“Miss-oh! Helen, you’re a genius.”

“I am, am I?”

“Well, I think so. Know a good-looking single young woman who might be able to join us? No hussies-someone sharp, who has the ability to converse. You must have met someone with half a brain during all those years of teaching.”

Helen laughed. “Good grief, Lil.”

“I’m serious.”

“All right. Let’s see…” There was another laugh, and she said, “If she can make it, I’ve got the perfect candidate.”

“Swanie, I’ve known you too long. I know that laugh. You’re up to mischief.”

“I just want to give Conn a challenge. But don’t worry. I’m bringing someone you’ll adore. But you have to be the one to invite Conn, and don’t tell him that I’m bringing anyone else along with me, all right?”

“Helen…”

“Lillian, I promise I’ll keep these two pups of mine in line.”

“Is she a newspaperwoman?”

“Yes.”

Lillian sighed. “And she won’t write about this evening?”

“No. Have I ever let you down?”

Lillian’s voice softened. “Oh, Helen, forgive me-I’m in a tizzy. No, you’ve never let me down, which is why I always end up coming to you when I’m in a fix. See you at seven.”

23

E VEN BEFORE THE DINNER DEBACLE, THE OLD FART WAS MAKING ME crazy.

Dinner Debacle. Men’s Room Incident. Byline Blowup. I was starting to think of my life in the newsroom as a series of B-movie titles.

On the Monday after the great Men’s Room Incident, O’Connor walked by my desk and said in an overly loud voice, “Great story about the dogs, Kelly.”

Kelly. Not Ms. Kelly or Miss Kelly. This probably isn’t something a lot of people would even notice, but it seems to me the naming business is part of deciding who is on the team and who isn’t. Last name only, you’re on.

I was still angry with him, though, and decided I was going to ignore him, but he ignored me first. He kept walking.

Later, he waited until Mark Baker was standing near my desk, walked up to him, and said, “What I said the other day was crap. I’d appreciate it if you would forget every word of it.”

“No problem,” Mark said, and looked at me.

I pointedly turned my attention back to the black IBM Selectric on my desk. I was writing a story on Las Piernas High School’s astounding success in a drill team competition. Not a story that would win a Pulitzer, but I wasn’t ashamed of it, either. I had found a quotable kid who made all the difference.

Lydia told me that O’Connor had been asking her a lot of questions about me. That bothered me. It bothered me even more that she had answered most of them. I asked myself why I cared and couldn’t come up with a good answer.

Then came the Byline Blowup.

A week after the Men’s Room Incident, I was working on a story about art supplies. I hit upon this one by accident-I was waiting for my father to finish his latest round of chemo, when Aunt Mary became irritated with my anxiousness and told me to take a walk. So I strolled down toward the emergency room. Sure enough, there was someone there with bigger problems than mine: the mother of a teenager who had started hallucinating in art class, then passed out. So far, he hadn’t regained consciousness.

“He doesn’t use drugs,” she said. “I don’t know what caused this.”

At first I chalked this up to the “not my Johnny” syndrome-no love is so blind as parental love.

But some of his friends came by to wait with her, and after talking to them for a while, I became convinced that her son might be the clean-and-sober type after all. I got a few details from his classmates about what had been going on just before he started freaking out.

I took down the mother’s name, address, and phone number. When the doctor came out to talk to her, she let me listen in. I asked him if chemicals in use in the art class could cause that reaction.

“Conceivably,” he answered. “We won’t know the answer to that until his blood work comes back from the lab.”

When I got back to the paper that afternoon, I contacted a woman in the purchasing department of the school district. I had been trying to build trust with her; she had been a minor source whom I had hoped to go to for more in the future. I hadn’t really planned on hitting her with anything big so soon, and at first I feared that asking for a list of art supplies purchased for one of the local high schools might be more than she was willing to risk. The records were ones I could demand to see, but I preferred not to do that-taking that approach only builds future resistance.

When I told her about the episode in the emergency room, though, she asked me to meet her at a coffee shop in forty minutes. When she arrived, she was carrying a big stack of photocopied invoices.

“I have a son that age,” she said, and left without anything more than my thanks.

I don’t know how O’Connor learned I was working on that one, but he did. I found a note on my desk in his odd, nearly indecipherable scrawl: the name and phone number for the Center for Occupational Safety in New York, an organization that could give me information about the hazards associated with art supplies.

I marched over to his desk and said, “Do you think I’m so helpless, I can’t do my own research?”

“No,” he answered.

I was trying to come up with something truly disagreeable to say to him about not being able to buy me off with little favors, when, as if reading my mind, he added, “I know you have no intention of accepting an apology from me, but we do have to work together here. Just use that information if you can, toss it if you can’t. I’m sure you’ll do what’s best for the story.”