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Shrugging, I decided to push it into the back of my mind and not think about it. People were weird sometimes, especially people in corporate cultures. They tended to be gossipy and act like every new piece of news was the end of the world. I was sure if anything was actually going on, it probably had something to do with the secret about Hunter and I getting out. I was prepared to deal with that.
I slipped into my little office through the door on the side because I saw Hunter on a call and didn’t want to go through his office and interrupt. I had just put my purse down and sat in my chair, waking up the desktop computer by shaking the mouse perhaps far more vigorously than absolutely necessary, when my intercom blinked.
Hunter rarely used the intercom, preferring instead to message me to come in or just bellowing and beckoning me from his seat. The intercom just felt so impersonal. He had only ever used it in those first few days, as far as I could remember.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Julia, we need to discuss something. If you could come in here, please.”
“Shall I bring a notepad?” I asked.
Recently, he had taken to asking me to bring a notepad and take long-hand notes of idea sessions, then find a way to present them back to him in different methods. It was a technique some executives used to brainstorm and then separate themselves from the ideas and see them again in a different way in order to really determine how much they liked them. I often reworked ideas into thought bubbles or trees, visual aids that helped him see his own thoughts in a new pattern.
“No,” he said.
Well, that’s odd.
As I opened the door to the main office, I saw Hunter hunched over his desk, typing something furiously. I wondered if something had gone wrong with the meetings that morning and he just needed to vent, or if something more serious had happened. Whatever was going on, it was clearly bothering him.
I sat in the chair across from him and waited patiently for him to finish what he was doing. When he finally stopped typing, he closed the laptop quietly and clasped his hands together on the desk. He sighed, and refused to meet my gaze. Until finally, he did. And it was intense.
“On my desk, right in front of you, is a newspaper,” he said.
“I see it,” I said. It was folded, one page specifically open and a black marker circling a story. It was only at that moment that I saw the headline.
“I want you to pick it up and read it before we speak any more,” he said.
“Alright,” I said, taking the paper in what was a suddenly trembling hand.
My eyes pored over it, and the more I read, the angrier I got. How dare they? For someone whose specialty was in journalism, not only was this an atrociously written article, but it was also false. Every claim it made, it made with no verification at all. It was essentially a gossip article. Not that certain news organizations hadn’t gone with gossip and wild claims to further a political agenda recently, but this was a character assassination for the sake of six hundred words in the back of a neighborhood paper.
It was egregious.
But when I finished the article, prepared to laugh it off with Hunter, I realized that he wasn’t laughing. His jaw was set and his eyes burned with anger. Was he as angry at the writer as I was? He couldn’t possibly believe…
“Explain it,” he said. “I want you to explain this.”
I was taken aback. He couldn’t be serious. This was one of the most patently ridiculous things I had ever seen. And it wasn’t like I was some stranger to him. He knew it couldn’t be true.
“I’ve never seen this before,” I said. “It’s insane.”
“Is it true?”
The sternness of his question was baffling. He was cutting through my words as if they were fluff, me deflecting without answering directly. I wanted to huff a laugh out of incredulousness, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I was too hurt. Too confused.
“Are you seriously asking me that question?”
“Are you seriously avoiding answering it?” he shot back.
“I’m not avoiding anything,” I said evenly. “It’s an insane article full of lies. It’s not true.”
“How do you know?” he asked. “How do you know that the mob didn’t burn the bar?”
I felt like the wind had been taken out of me. Tears stung the corners of my eyes and I tried to shake them off. This wasn’t the time to cry. It would seem like I was guilty and caught in a lie. But it was so hurtful for anyone to make those claims, no matter how much they might persist. No matter how true they might be.
“My father was everyone’s friend,” I said, trying to keep my voice from warbling. “He didn’t write you off because of where you came from or who you hung out with. He didn’t care if you were Irish or Italian or Russian. He wanted to share a drink with you. He wanted to be everyone’s friend.”
“Did he court the mob?” Hunter asked.
