Lou shuffled through the mess on his desk. “I must have given Sandra your paperwork. She does the bookkeeping and payroll.”
“Oh, okay. If there’s anything else you need, let me know.”
He grabbed a folded newspaper off the top of one of his stacks and pushed it toward me. “This is last week’s edition. You can get an idea of the layout from here. It’s pretty straightforward. The local section is at the back. Not much happens around here, but we print the high school sports schedules, town events, that kind of thing. Any questions?”
I had about a hundred questions, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. “What should I… ”
His phone rang and he answered it so fast, my question was left dangling in the air. “This is Lou.”
He paused, listening, and started to shake his head. “No, no. That’s not going to work.”
I waited, trying not to fidget in my seat.
“You always do a half-page spread. You’ve been doing the half-page for twenty-five years. Why change it now?” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and gestured for me to go. “Gotta take this. Go get started.”
Get started on what?
He uncovered the phone and kept talking. “I know subscriber numbers are down but these are the times we live in. This is still a great way to reach your loyal customers.”
I got up and took the paper, then quietly left his office.
Sandra smiled. “All set?”
“Not really.” I went back to my desk and took a seat. “He got a call.”
“That’s okay. There’s always a learning curve on the first day. Not much you can do about it. I’ll help you out.”
“Thank you.” I liked Sandra already, which was a relief, because the rest of the situation had me a little confused. “He handed me last week’s paper as if that would explain my whole job. But I have to be honest, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.”
“It’s a metaphor for life,” Ledger said, nodding sagely. “None of us know.”
Sandra laughed. “True enough, Ledger. Maybe you’re not always useless.”
“Told you,” he said, although he still didn’t look up from his phone.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll help get you started. There’s a community calendar on the city’s official Facebook page that will help. You can get dates for local events there. And I’ll send out some emails introducing you to people you’ll need to know. Trisha over at parks and rec, Carolyn in the mayor’s office, Ed on the city council. But it’s rare that anything newsworthy happens around here.”
I opened the paper and flipped through the pages. I didn’t want to be judgy—and I was certainly no expert on small-town newspapers—but it was all fairly generic. The local section was at the back, when it seemed like it should be front and center. And there wasn’t much that was particularly interesting. Just the basic news stories people could see anywhere, a few columns that were clearly reprinted from other sources, and a tiny calendar of events.
Refolding the paper, I let out a long breath. What had I gotten myself into? I wasn’t sure what they expected of me, where I should begin, or what I could do—if anything—to help the failing newspaper. Looking at its sad pages, I wondered if it would stay open at all. Or if I’d come to work one morning and find the door locked and my hopes of getting back on my feet torn to pieces, like all that scrap newspaper we used for our art projects.
That feeling that I’d made a big mistake in coming here was back. With a vengeance.
But what could I do? Keep making the best of it, and hope I still had a job next week.
That and find a new job that actually had a future, as soon as humanly possible.
CHAPTER 5
Audrey
My first day didn’t get any worse. So at least I had that going for me.
Sandra helped me get started on a few things and before I knew it, it was time to go home. The day had seemed both too fast and too slow, leaving me feeling like a wrung-out washrag.
I said goodbye to Sandra—she was the one bright spot at my new job so far—and went to get Max.
When I picked him up, he did his sacred job as a dog, acting like he was ready to burst with excitement as soon as he saw me. He circled around me, wagging his tail like the crazy dog he was, and gave me some wet face licks when I crouched to pet him.
The drive back to Pinecrest gave me some time to decompress. I didn’t quite dread the prospect of going back to my mom’s house, but I wasn’t looking forward to it, either. Keeping Max away from Duchess was proving to be frustrating. He didn’t mean to be so naughty, but the more I kept him away from the cat, the more he wanted to check her out. Her warning scratch had done nothing to temper his curiosity. Last night, he’d gotten away from me and Duchess had ended up stuck on the top of a bookshelf, unable to get down.