Alpha’s Baby: Shifter’s Mate

Chapter 2-1

Chapter Two Two days after the conversation in Don’s office, I was on my way to the “agricultural” meetup in Toledo, doing just a mile or two below the speed limit with the top of my convertible down, even though it was October first. The day was warm and sunny, feeling more like early September or even August.

Once in Toledo after a drive of a couple of hours, I checked into the hotel where the meetup would be, and then made my way to my room, assisted by a young porter, who carried my two medium-sized suitcases. Displaying opulence like marble flooring and gilded mirrors, even in the elevator, the hotel was maybe the most upscale one in the city, and it came with a pretty upscale per-night “price tag” to match. Normally, living on a “mid-level” reporter’s salary, which wasn’t anything that would ever make me rich, the expense of the hotel would have given me pause, but the Press was covering my stay, fortunately.

“There goes our budget for half a year,” Don had said jokingly, earlier that day.

At least, I was pretty sure he’d been joking, although Lord only knew that the Press had been having financial difficulties the previous several years. This was mainly because the number of subscribers to the paper copy of the Press, which was now only delivered to homes on Thursdays and Fridays, had continued to drop each quarter for about the past twenty.

News stand purchases of the paper had dropped steadily as well. Pretty much the only thing keeping the paper afloat at this point was subscription sales to the online version of the Press, and the accompanying ad revenue. However, even those sales had recently stagnated.

“We need to be the first to break a big story with national appeal,” Don frequently said, to me, others in the office, and sometimes even to himself, under his breath. “We need to cover a story that only we have exclusive rights to. That will get our subscription sales up, both in paper copy and online.”

That afternoon on the phone, before I’d left for Toledo, Don had basically told me all this once again, adding that if I could get the scoop on the animal shifter story, proving their existence and telling all about them, he imagined that there might even be a Pulitzer prize in it for me.

“Or at least some kind of a lofty prize for investigative reporting. If you can get proof that animal shifters exist, though, right here in the United States…if you can get pictures and video and all that, and write a bang-up exposé to go with it all…well, I just can’t imagine anything less than a Pulitzer.”

The very thought made something that felt like a current of electricity race through my body.

During my time at the Press, I’d pretty much reported it all at one time or another, everything from crime, to human interest stories, to governmental happenings and corruption scandals, although without ever really finding my niche. Only in the previous few weeks had Don and I started seriously discussing investigative reporting, but it was already feeling “right” to me. And I had a pretty good idea that receiving a Pulitzer prize at twenty-seven years old would feel exceptionally “right.”

I’d never dreamed of becoming so successful in my career so soon. I had, however, thought about it. A lot. In fact, at times, I almost felt insatiable for success and accomplishment. I had the idea that the more I achieved, the happier I would become. This idea was constantly reinforced by my closest friends, who were highly-driven “career women” themselves, and by my mom, who’d always wanted to be a successful “career woman” but had never quite made it there.

She’d actually been working on a journalism degree when she’d met my dad, who’d been a full ten years older and was already “established” in life, enjoying a successful career as an engineer. Even though my mom had been just a year away from her degree, she’d dropped out of school when she and my dad had gotten married, abandoning her dream of becoming a reporter, at least temporarily.

“I’ll give Peter the kids he wants, then when they’re all in school, I’ll pick right back up where I left off,” my mom had told me once, recalling what her thinking had been. “I’ll jump right back into college, finish my degree, and then become a successful reporter before the oldest child is ten.”

Except that things hadn’t exactly worked out that way, and actually, they hadn’t worked out at all. My mom had wanted “maybe one child” in her thirties, once her career was well established, she’d told me; but my dad had wanted four or five kids, at least, and once he and my mom were married, he hadn’t wanted to wait, being that he was already in his thirties and felt ready for kids, my mom had told me.

So, because she loved my dad “immeasurably,” as she said, and just wanted to make him happy, my mom had my three older brothers and then me, all of us in pretty rapid succession. By the time I was born, though, the terrible depression my dad had experienced as a teenager had returned, preventing him from enjoying his kids and the whole experience of being a parent as much as he’d thought he would.

He started spending days in bed, my mom said, supplementing his prescription antidepressants by “self-medicating” with booze and all sorts of non-prescription pills. A month before his suicide, he was fired from the engineering job he used to love.

After his suicide, my mom took over spending days in bed, always with a bottle of booze nearby. I was in first or second grade when she finally “came out of it” and returned to some semblance of acting like her old self, not that I really remembered what she’d been like before my dad had died, but my oldest brother, Steven, had told me some things.

He’d also done a lot to take care of me the previous several years, doing things like combing my hair in the morning and tucking me into bed every night when my mom just couldn’t manage, which was often. Steven had also become a pro at making “Mom can’t get out of bed” dinners, like frozen fish sticks, frozen chicken tenders, and canned spaghetti.

It was Steven, at thirteen years old, who suggested to our mom, once she’d seemed to move beyond her major depression, that she go back to school to complete her journalism degree. Our house was paid for by this point, but our dad’s life insurance money was nearly gone, and Steven probably knew that we would soon need some income coming into the house, at least income beyond the small social security checks we kids received every month for having a deceased dad.

Not to mention that Steven probably thought that our mom finally getting her degree and starting the career she’d always wanted would make her happy. My mom didn’t feel like she could spend a year in school, though. We needed money now, she said, so she had to get a job right away, which she did, getting hired as a secretary at a law firm. She had no secretarial experience to speak of, but she was a fast, accurate typist, and that was apparently enough to earn her the job.

Over a decade later, when I started college, aiming to get a journalism degree, my mom was still working at the law firm. I’d asked her if she’d maybe want to join me in going to school so that she could finally finish her degree, suggesting that maybe she could take classes after work.

However, she’d declined with a rueful little smile. “My time has passed, Sable. Who’d want to hire a fifty-year-old reporter with zero experience? Besides…as long as you become a reporter, I’ll be happy. That’s all I want. Just for one of us, at least, to realize our dream. That will be enough.”

My mom and I had never been particularly close, although we’d never not gotten along, if that made any sense. We’d never had any major “blowout” fights. I’d never shrieked anything nasty at her. At the same time, though, we’d never really laughed ourselves silly together. We said I love you to each other maybe once or twice a year, usually by way of writing the sentiment in birthday cards. However, as I progressed through journalism school, a curious thing had happened. We’d started having little “moments” as I thought of them. We’d started getting closer.

During my first semester, my mom had called me at least once a week, ending a few of those calls by saying I love you out loud. And each and every call, she said she was proud of me, something she hadn’t said too often while I was growing up. We actually started sharing some laughs on the phone, too.

My sophomore year of college, she started sending me monthly care packages filled with homemade cookies and other baked goods that I liked. This, after making homemade cookies maybe two or three times my entire childhood. These care packages all came with special handwritten notes, too, all saying the same thing. So proud of my reporter-in-the-making. Love, Mom.

In addition to cookies and notes, the care packages often came with checks, so that I could focus on my journalism studies and not have to work during school. I was pretty sure that none of my brothers had received checks during college, or care packages, either, for that matter. All three of them had worked part-time jobs from first semester to last. Steven reported to me once that sometimes our mom had sent him cards while he’d been in school.

On top of us becoming closer, my mom’s general life happiness seemed to increase while I was earning my degree. Just by her emails, texts, and phone calls, I could sense a distinct change. Usually one to just come right home after work and watch TV, she started going out more, in the process making a few new friends and meeting Dale, the man who was to become her long-term boyfriend. Up until him, she hadn’t dated at all after my dad’s suicide, despite only being in her mid-thirties when it had happened.

When I finally earned my journalism degree, my mom openly wept throughout most of the two-hour-long graduation ceremony. From that day forward, she began introducing me as “Sable, my brilliant reporter daughter,” even before I’d landed my job at the Press. When I did land my job at the Press, my mom threw a massive party at her and Dale’s new home, sparing no expense. Beforehand, when I’d suggested that to keep costs down, maybe we could just grill hot dogs and burgers instead of having an outdoor evening buffet of steak and shrimp for two hundred people, she’d asked if I was crazy.

“Hot dogs and burgers to celebrate you becoming a real, honest-to-God reporter? I’ve truly never heard of anything more ludicrous, Sable.”

She honestly looked angry that I’d even suggested what I had.

Now, years later, I couldn’t really remember whose idea it had been for me to get a journalism degree and become a reporter in the first place. Sometimes, when I thought back to how much I’d enjoyed writing articles for my high school’s newspaper, I was sure it had been my idea. Other times, when I recalled my mom researching the journalism programs at various universities, poring over brochures and making endless phone calls, even when I was only a sophomore in high school, I was convinced it had been hers.

At any rate, no matter whose idea it had been, everything had worked out for the best. I loved being a reporter. I definitely loved the idea of possibly winning a Pulitzer prize. Just a little after seven in the evening in my hotel room in Toledo, I began taking steps to make that possibility a reality.

After unpacking my suitcases, I showered, dressed in a bra and underwear, and then styled my long dark reddish brown hair, running a big-barrel curling iron through it after drying to create some slightly-wavy volume. Next I applied a little makeup, giving myself “smoky eyes” and comparatively understated pale peach lips.

I was just tugging a “little black dress” over my head when a thought occurred to me that made me stop dead in my tracks, holding the front of the dress a few inches away from my face and my makeup.