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women have to matter. Real women must matter.
    Jaw set, I look at Glenn. “Will there ever be a place for real human interest stories in our format again? Or are those days
     long gone?”
    “I don’t see those stories working with the new format, no.”
    My heart sinks. Not just a proposed co-host, but a new format, too. I can’t believe it’s all changing so quickly. I can’t
     believe I have so little control. “What is the new format?”
    “Hollywood buzz, high energy, lots of fun.”
    “But we do that already.”
    Glenn looks at me from beneath his bushy brows. “And you don’t like it. If you had your way, we’d be CNN and you’d be Anderson
     Cooper.”
    He’s right, and I wrinkle my nose. “Would that be such a bad thing?”
    “Not if you were a man on a news program. But we’re not the news, we’re entertainment, and we’ve got to entertain the folks,
     Tia, and that’s the part you have a hard time doing.”
    But I didn’t always. “I’m still fun,” I say without too much conviction.
    “Maybe it’s time you took a break. Did something different for a while— ”
    “No.” I get to my feet, give him a tight smile. “I don’t want to leave and I don’t want a break. This is my home.”
    Home, I find myself repeating during the taping of tonight’s show. Home. A sensitive topic for me.
    I was fourteen when everything changed. Fourteen when I learned that life is precarious and death just a shadow beyond our
     doorstep. We’d just spent the day at the beach and were driving home. I was mad at the time, I forget why, and wasn’t talking
     to anyone. But I remember being mad, remember saying over and over beneath my breath that I hated them all, that I couldn’t
     wait to grow up and move away, that I couldn’t wait for my real life to begin.
    And then in one instant it all changed. In one instant I lost them all— Mom, Dad, Willow, and Acacia. Willow, sixteen and
     the oldest of us, was at the wheel, but they say the accident wasn’t her fault, that it was the other car that swerved into
     our lane. I can’t help thinking though that if Dad had been driving he might have had better instincts. He might have braked
     or swerved the other way instead of plunging off the road and down the cliff.
    I also can’t help thinking that if I hadn’t been so mad, if I hadn’t said I hated them, if I hadn’t wanted another life to
     begin, they’d all be alive today.
    “Tia, thirty seconds,” Kevin, the floor director, calls out.
    I blink, look up, returning to the set and the teleprompter and the next segment I’m introducing.
    My heart aches, the old grief swamping me, pulling me back down. Grief is my biggest enemy. I’ve spent too many years missing.
     Missing my family. Missing my husband. Missing me. Hating me. Won’t go there again.
    My head lifts, and I smash the sadness, smash the emptiness, smash all the bad feelings. Good feelings, I tell myself, good
     thoughts.
    Marta’s Eva, who makes me laugh. Hiking with Christie in the canyon. Shey’s gorgeous Texas drawl.
    Good feelings. Only good feelings.
    But God, it’s hard. It’s hard when I’m so afraid it’s all about to be taken away again and I can’t let it happen, I can’t.
     I’m done losing in life. I’m done hurting. I’m done feeling numb and dead and empty.
America Tonight
is all I have. It’s all I am. Don’t they see that? Don’t they get that?
    Kevin holds up a card. Ten seconds.
    Ten seconds and I’m falling apart. Can’t fall apart. I’m Tiana Tomlinson.
    I force a smile despite the gritty sensation in the back of my eyes and the raw panic burning in my throat. Smiling that fierce
     white smile, I drag the good in and up, from the tip of my toes through my knees to my belly and my chest, turning on for
     the camera and my audience of millions. Because this is my family now. These are the people who matter and this is the place
     I now call home.

Chapter Three

    I ’m meeting Celia Ramirez tonight