Nate Butler
Subject: Trick? or Treat?
November 1, 2005, 10:00 a.m.
Miss Emerson,
Did I dream last night? Images keep flitting through my mind of a dark-haired, curvy temptress rolling around my office to “Xanadu” in white roller skates.
Nate Butler
Editor in Chief, Austin Speak
I pause, a dangerous inkling coursing through me while a bold line comes into clear view in my mind. Just as I acknowledge it, my curiosity blurs it, and I step over, unable to stop myself.
Stella Emerson
Subject: Trick? or Treat?
November 1, 2005, 10:01 a.m.
Sir,
I’m going to keep your psychotic break in confidence as I need this job and the platform it provides me as a budding journalist. I assure you that I have no idea （buffs roller skates） about what you’re referring to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a deadline and a very anal editor to report to. I can’t afford to entertain your delusions any further.
Stella
Xanadu Enthusiast, Austin Speak
Nate Butler
Subject: Trick? or Treat?
November 1, 2005, 10:03 a.m.
In my office now, Right Girl, and lock the fucking door behind you.
Nate Butler
Editor in Chief, Austin Speak
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” I exhale in a barely audible whisper as I briefly kick back in my seat.
They were involved.
Gaping at the revelation, I again glance up to see Dad still occupied in his chair.
My dad and Stella Emerson, now Stella Emerson Crowne, wife to one of the biggest rock legends in history, were involved romantically.
Shock vibrates through me as I scroll through endless emails between them. There are hundreds—if not thousands—of emails spanning over four years from my father to a woman who isn’t my mother. Years of emails from one of my heroes to another. Years of his life where he was clearly infatuated and crazy in love with Stella Emerson Crowne.
Not Addison Warner Hearst, my mother, his wife.
It’s no secret amongst us who work at Austin Speak that Stella was one of the foundational blocks who aided the paper in becoming a reputable and well-respected local news source. In fact, whenever Stella’s been mentioned, Dad’s been completely transparent about that aspect of her time here and her contributions. Thinking back, not once has he ever mentioned he was involved with her personally.
Not once.
I would have remembered that, considering I’ve idolized her career as one to aspire to, along with any other ambitious journalist. But back when they were involved, the social media revolution hadn’t yet begun, and there were no online pictures, nor was there a digital footprint of the progression of their relationship. At that time, there was a considerable amount of control on what surfaced on the web, on access itself. Dad never had a Facebook for anything other than the paper, and apps like Insta didn’t exist yet. The two of them weren’t newsworthy then…but Reid Crowne was.
Even so, Dad has purposefully kept their involvement under wraps, but why? Dad and I share everything. He’s been an open book to me my whole life. Granted, relationships are different, but he’s been pretty candid about those, or at least I thought so. Thinking back now, I can’t really remember him referencing a specific ex.
Feeling a little betrayed—knowing I really don’t have much of a right to be due to the personal nature—I decide not to torture myself and respect his privacy enough to scroll to the last few emails. If anything, I need to know how and why it ended and, more specifically, who ended it. I skip forward nearly five years to read the last few.
Stella Emerson
Subject: I’m Here
September 11, 2010, 6:02 p.m.
Nate,
I’m almost embarrassed to admit I’m scared, but I’ve never been able to hide the truth from you. Even if I didn’t admit it, you’d be able to read between these lines somehow. I’ve strayed halfway across the country from everything I’ve ever known and everyone who truly knows me.
But I guess the meaning of home is subjective now, isn’t it?
When the wheels touched down in Seattle, it sort of felt like walking into a warm embrace. Nothing was familiar, and yet being here feels like déjà vu. Like my life here, my chapters were already written, and the city was just waiting for me to begin to live them. Even the overgrown elm tree next to my apartment building is oddly recognizable. Or maybe I’m romanticizing myself in my new life here. I’m sure you’re thinking that right now as you read this, though I’m more the cosmic believer of the two of us. As crazy as it may seem to the rationalist you are, I can sense I’m starting the life I was meant to. Though I have to admit, certain parts of me are still trying to make peace with leaving.