The newspaper, founded by Ethan’s great-grandfather at the turn of the century, was a family institution, one all Kensingtons, including our future children, if we had them, were expected to participate in.
“Well,” Abby continued, “I still think you should play the Kensington card and get some R and R. It’s been a tough year. Why not give yourself some time to regroup, rest?”
While I was quick to change the subject when others brought up the past, it didn’t bother me when Abby did. “Thanks,” I said, nodding. “But I’m fine. Really.”
I looked up to see Frank’s face peeking over the top of my cubicle, pencil firmly planted in mouth. “There you are,” he said. I could hear the urgency in his voice. “Anything to report?”
I cocked my head to the right, wondering if pencils still contained the type of lead that causes poisoning. Perhaps that could explain Frank’s slightly neurotic behavior. “Report?”
“On the story.”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I was just, uh, talking to Abby about that.”
“Good,” he said, tucking the pencil behind his ear. “Get me an update by this afternoon, if you can.”
“Will do,” I replied, nodding as Frank spun around and walked back to his office.
I turned to Abby. “Help.”
She clasped her hands in her lap. “So, a story about a snowstorm.”
“Yup.”
“Remember what I said about taking some time off?”
“Not going to do it.”
She nodded. “All right, then, let’s get to work. Have you started interviewing?”
I shook my head.
“What’s your angle?”
“I don’t have one.” I sighed in defeat, before remembering what Frank had said about the storm in 1933. “Frank wants to title the piece ‘Blackberry Winter.’”
“Blackberry what?”
I tried to focus. “Winter. It’s what forecasters call a late-season cold-weather event, I guess. Frank said something about a similar storm happening on the same day in 1933. It practically crippled the city.”
Abby sat up straighter in her chair. “You’re kidding.”
I shrugged. “Frank has this crazy idea that the storm has returned in some significant way. He wants me to do a then-and-now exposé. Can you believe that? A feature on weather. I can’t think of a more dull assignment.”
Abby shook her head. “Dull? Claire, you can’t be serious. This is good stuff. Have you even started looking into what went on in that snowstorm in 1933?”
I shook my head. “Honestly, Abby, I think I’d rather go clean the toilet than start researching this story. I’m in trouble.”
“All right,” she said. “Give me an hour, and I’ll find you something good. You know I love an excuse to search the archives.” She looked wistful. “The 1930s and the Great Depression—I’m sure I’ll find something good.”
I shrugged. “I hope so.”
Abby stood up and nodded with assurance. “Order Thai. I’ll be back at noon.”
“I’ll try,” I said, poking my head out into the hallway. “Not sure if any delivery guys will be driving in this weather.”
“Tell them you’ll tip forty percent,” she said. “Good research requires pad Thai.”
Ethan’s office, on the other side of the newsroom, was locked when I walked over to see him a half hour later. As I knocked on his door, it occurred to me that I had begun to feel more like his employee than his wife. In the past few months, we’d shared a bed, but little else.
“Hi, Claire,” Ethan’s assistant, Tracy, said from her desk a few feet away. She gestured to Ethan’s door. “You just missed him, sorry. He had a meeting, then he’s off to a lunch meeting.”
“Oh,” I said, forcing a smile. “With who?”
Tracy paused for an uncomfortable few seconds. “Um, I think he said he was joining Cassandra at that new Italian place down the street.”
“In this weather? They’re open?”
“They opened especially for her,” Tracy said, her tone indicating slight annoyance. “She’s doing a review, you know.”
I helped myself to a piece of butterscotch from Tracy’s candy dish, tossing the wrapper into a nearby trash can. “And Ethan is moonlighting as an assistant food critic?”
Tracy shrugged. “She said something about gnocchi.”
“Gnocchi.”
She nodded.
“He hates gnocchi.”
Tracy gave me a sympathetic look.
On paper, it made perfect sense that the managing editor of the paper would join the food critic for a tasting event. But Tracy and I both knew the truth: At that very moment, my husband was having lunch with his ex. “Thanks,” I said, collecting myself. “I’ll catch him later.”
Up until recently, it hadn’t bothered me that Cassandra, the paper’s food critic and Ethan’s former girlfriend, worked three doors down, and that she seemed to