When Never Comes

by Barbara Davis

memories of his time at Week in Review. Not that it was all bad. In fact, in the beginning it was pretty amazing. The pace had been grueling, but he’d relished the work. He had interviewed POWs and Holocaust survivors; the victims of rape, incest, racism, and mass shootings; the survivors of oil tanker explosions; and wives who lost firefighter husbands when the towers fell on 9/11. And somewhere in there he’d even managed to snag himself a Hearst Award. But as time went by, the lines between news and sensationalism began to blur, and word came down from on high that human interest was dead. They wanted shock and fear, blood and gore, the gruesome tick-tock of human tragedy, because fear outsold hope and always would. Things finally reached critical mass when Killian ordered him to interview a survivor from the Crystal Lake Middle School shooting; a twelve-year-old whose mother—a teacher’s aide—had been shot and killed while standing just three feet away. That’s where he had drawn the line and walked away, though not before letting Killian and an entire newsroom full of reporters know exactly what he thought. It was a habit he had, saying what was on his mind. Usually without thinking before he opened his mouth and frequently in the presence of witnesses. Not that he regretted a word of what he’d said to Killian that day. There were people who needed a dose of truth now and then. Killian was one of them. Stephen Ludlow had been another.