I Do Hope He's Watching

At 10:15 on the night my husband is named Broadcaster of the Year, he steps up to the podium and thanks his agent, his director, his co-anchor, his first news director, and our night doorman. By first name.

But he doesn’t thank me.

The press release announcing our “amicable” separation went out at 9:58, while I was fixing his run time. I know because I checked the header. It went to the press list I built.

For twenty-two years I’ve been Scott Brannigan’s producer, his researcher, and the voice he never let near a microphone. Every broadcast morning since his show launched, a prep sheet was in his inbox before dawn. Four thousand eight hundred and six of them. “Keep watching, New York” was mine too. He called it corny. It’s on bus shelters now.

His lawyer calls my contribution “occasional assistance.”

He forgot two things. I kept copies of everything. And his network just lost its archive, right before a live prime-time special celebrating twenty years of Scott.

Only one man in that ballroom saw me sit back down. Victor Ocasio runs the whole news division, and twenty-three years ago he spent a blackout at the edge of my shot, watching a girl with a flashlight in her teeth keep the city on the air. Before he asks me to dinner, he signs away every ounce of power he has over my work. In writing.

So when Scott goes live to tell the city I’m unstable, Victor can’t save me.

Good. I don’t need saving. I need eleven seconds of dead air and a forty-foot video wall.

I do hope he’s watching.

Tropes & themes:

Revenge served live, on air

The woman behind the man finally takes the credit

Older heroine (48) who stops hiding her silver streak

He’s loved her since 2003, and he asks every single week

A hero who gets out of her way instead of rescuing her

Smug husband, public downfall

No reconciliation

Dual POV

HEA