White River Red by Becky Marietta

Author:Becky Marietta
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TouchPoint Press
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Fayetteville, 1972

“SO JACK WAS GOOD TO YOU?” Betty asked. It was a purely subjective, not entirely professional question, she knew, but the truth was she’d stopped seeing Forrestina as just a news story a long time ago. The weeks flew by, and when Betty wasn’t sitting with her new acquaintance, she was thinking of her. She found herself impatiently hurrying through her other assignments at the paper—Little League reports, shop openings, festival details, and of course, obituaries—so that she could pore over her notes. Forrestina was a difficult person to read—on the one hand very open and direct, answering Betty’s questions without hesitation or diplomacy, yet on the other hand, Betty sensed she held a lot back—the emotion behind her stories. If Betty got too close to a particularly painful subject, Forrestina’s face closed up like a Slinky on the bottom of the stairs. Anything to do with Max or the baby she’d lost she’d relate in flat tones, as if she were merely reciting “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Now, when Betty asked her question about Jack, she saw the curled wires that had been cheerfully extending recoil suddenly, and she knew they were in choppy waters again. When Forrestina didn’t answer for a full twenty seconds, Betty prompted softly, “Ms. Campbell?”

She’d been studying her hands intently, but when she looked up, Betty was startled by the tears in her eyes. Betty reached out to her tentatively and was relieved that she let her place her hands on the again balled-up fists, which lay knotted in her denim lap.

“Ms. Forrestina, we don’t have to talk about this right now if you don’t want,” Betty said. She knew that letting her off the hook now might be a colossal mistake—if she struck while Forrestina was so obviously vulnerable, she might get a rare glimpse past that armadillo shell of hers, but purposefully hurting her was out of the question. Betty had realized that the story had ceased to be as important as the person. There was no question that she was smitten by this old feisty gal. She was all the things Betty had always longed to be but was not yet. Betty liked to imagine herself as a modern woman, a career gal, a mild feminist, but she knew deep down that she was not brave enough to be a true pioneer; convention and timidity always stopped her short. It had taken far too long for her to work up the courage to demand a better gig at the paper, and even now, she let Murray pile work on her that he’d never expect from her male colleagues. She’d endured the butt-pats and the “honeys” from fellow male reporters, not wanting to make a fuss or be seen as a hysterical female, all the while gritting her teeth, convincing herself that they meant no harm, that it was just the way they were. “Boys will be boys,” as the old cliché went . . . so why

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