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what happened?”
    The skepticism was plain on her face. “You honestly don’t know?”
    “No, I don’t.” The lines running down either side of his mouth were deep. “I wasn’t going to let on that I had no clue. I had to read it in Romenesko’s fucking blog that you’d gone to the Record . How the hell could you do that to me?”
    She seemed to weigh his anger and then she sighed, her voice gentle, “Baxter asked to see me. When I got into the office, he shut the door and told me he was risking his own job by giving me a heads up that it looked like layoffs were coming. He said my work was great, but he was still concerned he couldn’t keep me off the cut list. When I asked him why, he hemmed and hawed, and finally told me that you and I had been less than discrete. He said your asking for me on all your out-of-town assignments had become an office joke. And people were gossiping and laughing every time we were both out of the newsroom at the same time. And of course there were all those fights everyone knew about. He said unless I cooled things down one of the two of us would go. And he was certain it wouldn’t be you.”
    “Jesus,” Sam felt his throat close, the heat from the liquor suddenly bitter in his mouth.
    “It was just so humiliating, I resigned right there. I knew Stapleton at the Record , and called her before I left the newsroom. By some act of divine mercy, she actually had a spot. At seven that night, I was on a flight to Des Moines for the interview. It meant a 10K pay cut, but I accepted on the spot and didn’t even go back. Marcy helped the movers pack my stuff.” Sam didn’t say anything, just sat pressing holes into his empty cup with Jack’s letter opener, swearing to himself that someday he’d find a way to make Baxter pay. “Wasn’t it better that way?” she finally asked.
    “Not for me,” he answered, looking up. “Why didn’t you come to me? I could have …”
    She held up her hand. “Yeah, that would have made me feel so much better, to have my married lover pulling strings to help me keep my job.”
    “At least you could have looked me in the face and told me it was over.”
    “Like I hadn’t tried that before?”
    He pulled back, drawing a breath, and she knew in a few seconds they’d be yelling, all the feelings they’d always stirred bubbling out of control. “Oh, Sam.” Her frustration and exhaustion were suddenly plain. “We were both so messed up after what happened in South Dakota. It had to end and Baxter was right. One of us had to leave. Down deep, you know it too. Do we have to pick it apart?”
    “No,” the abrupt concession came gruff and thick from his throat, and he took her empty cup in place of his ruined one, pouring himself a little more. “There’s no point now, is there? But you can’t know how I …” She waited, breath suspended for the word he’d choose, but those green eyes dropped as he asked instead, “And now? You’re OK now, with this guy?”
    Her voice softened. “I’m great with this guy.”
    He shook his head, and she knew she wouldn’t like what he was going to say. “It just doesn’t fit.”
    “Oh God, what does that mean?”
    He met her eyes. “You’re one sophisticated lady for a backwater publisher to handle. There’s nothing worse than seeing a newsman with his hand down the candidate’s pants, and you know it. Come on, Tess. I know you too well to believe you thought it was just great seeing Thor up there on that platform today. Erickson is using him. It suits his image, having the hometown paper break the announcement story. And you’re too savvy not to know it.”
    “You think I should have called Jack off?” No way would she admit to him that she hadn’t known.
    “I think it would have helped the putz out, yeah. I haven’t forgotten how you’d sound off about any journalist who was too cozy with a source. If you couldn’t tell him how much it must have made you squirm, what else aren’t you