Butterfly Summer

“I’ll try. Tell Vera Mae not to hold dinner for me, will you?”

Heather stopped. “Mom.”

“Please don’t say it. I’ll eat here, with your father, and be home later. Besides, the pastor is coming this evening, and I don’t want to miss him.”

Heather sighed. She understood Nora’s need to spend as many waking moments at Wallace’s side as possible, but these past weeks had taken a toll on her, too. She had started to look brittle and fragile. Still, convincing Nora Hamilton not to give her utmost to her family was easier said than done. In the end, Heather left her mother just as Nora wished.

She knew that staying busy would help keep her own mind off her father’s health. Nevertheless, once she was alone in her car in the hospital parking lot, with the air conditioner humming against the mid-June heat, Heather took the time to formulate a cogent and purposeful prayer, one that included family unity during this difficult time.

Her family truly loved one another, but Wallace’s illness had upset everyone and exacerbated their differences, especially those between Jeremy and Tim. It didn’t help that this crisis had come just after Curtis Resnick’s embezzlement had been uncovered.

Heather agreed with Jeremy’s decision not to prosecute Curtis and to demand restitution instead. Tim, however, did not. Amy claimed not to care so long as the money was recouped. Chris had taken no position, and only spelled out the likely consequences of prosecuting Resnick when asked to do so by Jeremy. Thankfully, Wallace had left the decision to his eldest son, who seemed determined to be generous as well as fair. After all, he and Curtis had been very good friends at one time.

Whatever opinion any of them held, however, no one wanted to be dealing with the aftermath of embezzlement while Wallace was fighting for his life. It was added stress that none of them needed just now. Yet, they’d get through it.

They were Hamiltons, and Hamiltons might bend, but they didn’t break. If Heather hadn’t learned anything else from her father, she’d learned that much. It was one more reason why going on without him was almost unthinkable at this point.

“Oh, Lord,” she prayed aloud, “I don’t know what Your purpose is in all this, but I do know that You have one. I just hope that when all is said and done, it includes healing my father and bringing our family closer together. I won’t ask for things to be the way they were before. We’ll never be the same after this, but we can be better. Isn’t that what You always want for us, Lord, to be more like You? Use this, then, toward that end.”

She went on with her prayer, fervently seeking God’s will and claiming His mercy. Afterward, as always, she felt better, strong enough to face whatever awaited her at the office.

As features editor of the magazine, she was always dealing with some crisis, stepping in to settle differences and adjust priorities, choosing projects, making sure all the i’s were dotted and the t’s crossed—whatever it took to get each feature and column brought in under deadline. She just never dreamed that today of all days she would become the feature.

Chapter Two

Heather walked into the stately three-story brown brick building on the corner of Main Street and Mill Road in the very center of the city and smiled at the elderly pair sitting behind the reception counter in the small lobby.

The Gordons had been with Hamilton Media since the days when the Davis Landing Dispatch had been a weekly, rather than a daily, newspaper. Since then they had each “retired” from one position to another, finally winding up as self-proclaimed “gatekeepers.”

Stooped and gray, they resembled nothing so much as someone’s great-grandparents, which they were. They were also sweetly formidable, and as such had earned the nickname “The Gargoyles.” It was virtually impossible for an outsider to get past either one of them and into the building without an appointment, let alone into the offices of the newspaper on the ground floor, those of the magazine on the second or those of the corporate center on the third.

Without missing a beat, Mr. Gordon hopped up from his stool and swiftly crossed the polished marble floor to the elevator, punching the up button, so that the door stood open and waiting when Heather strode into it, her flowered skirt belling out as she turned on the toes of her sensible pumps. Mrs. Gordon, meanwhile, was already on the phone, alerting whoever had inquired about her return that Heather was once again in the building.

As the old-fashioned elevator, sumptuously appointed in dark paneling and gleaming brass, rose laboriously toward the second floor, Heather took a moment to straighten the square oversize collar that all but obliterated the fitted bodice of her dress, which was short-sleeved in deference to the weather.

As the door slid open once more, Heather greeted the secretary to the head of advertising, who shoved a clipboard and pen at her as she stepped out of the elevator.

“The lifestyle column has to be cut,” she stated unceremoniously, “and they’re holding print until you okay it.”

“What’s the problem?”

“A larger than normal advertisement.”

Heather sighed inwardly. Carl Platt, the author of that particular column, would be screaming.

“Which advertiser?” Heather asked, glancing swiftly over the reedit as she moved past the receptionist’s desk and into the warren of cubicles that made up the magazine offices.

A popular Nashville restaurant that was both a regular and valued advertiser was named. Heather didn’t like cutting short one of their most popular features, but she knew too well on which side the Hamilton bread was buttered to kick up a fuss, not that she would have anyway. She added her initials to those of her sister Amy’s, endorsing the change, and passed the clipboard back to the twentysomething secretary, who promptly disappeared.

True to form, Carl Platt, whom Heather thought of as a rotund prima donna in a bow tie, pounced the moment she turned the corner. She nodded distractedly as he ranted.

“I know, I know,” she murmured sympathetically, tsking at the injustices Carl Platt heatedly recounted. “I’ll tell Amy as soon as I see her.” For all the good that would do.

Amy made decisions based on the overall needs of the publication and its parent company, but Heather didn’t bother pointing that out to Platt.

No sooner had she mollified him than another clipboard appeared beneath her nose. This one involved a title font change.

Heather liked the looks of the original, but it appeared to be impossible to center on the page. The proposed substitute was more uniform in the space required for each letter.

She added an exclamation mark for balance and kept the original font. Then she spent several minutes perusing a paragraph in an article that she was going to edit in its entirety at a later date anyway, before finally reaching her assistant’s desk.

In her forties, with teenage children and a husband crippled by a rare form of arthritis, Brenda was efficient, reliable, professional and not at all shy about voicing her opinions.

“Ellen’s in a panic. Like that’s anything new,” Brenda announced, handing over half a dozen phone messages. “Honestly, someone ought to give our beauty editor a personality makeover.”

Heather smiled without comment. Ellen Manning was something of a character. Physically stunning with long, perfectly styled ash blond hair, meticulous makeup, vibrant blue eyes and fingernails like manicured talons, Ellen approached her job as if beauty and fashion were the be-all and end-all of human existence. Consequently she was very good at it, which was reason enough so far as Heather was concerned to put up with her high-handed, overbearing methods and short fuse.

Holding up three of the messages in one hand, Heather commented in surprise, “These are from Ethan Danes.”

Ethan was the staff photographer currently working with Ellen on a photo shoot at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Tall, dark and breathtaking, Ethan was the new office heartthrob—and for good reason. He had a quick, million-watt smile and a smooth, masculine charm that oozed from his pores.

“Yeah, I guess Ellen’s meltdown is justified this time,” Brenda conceded. “To hear Ethan tell it, we may not have a Makeover Maven feature this month.”

Frowning, Heather pushed through the door into her small office. Not much wider than the single window at its end, the room had just enough space for a file cabinet, a desk, a table wedged into one corner, an extra chair and the small potted plant perched on the windowsill. A large dry-erase board took up the whole of the wall behind her desk, leaving the wall opposite it for a series of framed covers and family photos. Only the ceiling fan, circling lazily overhead, kept the tiny room from becoming a stifling closet in the sultry June heat.

Heather reached immediately for her desk phone and dialed Ethan’s cell phone number. He answered on the first ring.

“Crisis central, this is the shutterbug speaking.”

“Ethan, what on earth is going on down there?”

“Well, let’s see. The makeover candidate is a no-show.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, this time she’s the one with the flu. Guess she got it from her kid. Anyway, the Opry says we can’t reschedule. Again.”

“Hasn’t Ellen explained the circumstances?”

“Let’s just say that Ellen is making enemies and influencing no one,” Ethan quipped. “Meanwhile, the window is closing. You’d better get down here and apply some of that patented Heather healing balm before we’re permanently barred from the most popular venue in town.”

Heather healing balm, was it? She tamped down a spurt of pride and made a quick decision. Well, she’d wanted to stay busy today.

“I’m on my way.”

“Come around to the side. I’ll be there to let you in.”

After hanging up, she headed back the way she’d come.