One

~

On her last day of kindergarten, Hope Jensen announced, walking hand in hand with her mother, that she had finally made a decision about her career. “One day I will grow up to become either president of the United States or a famous newspaper reporter.”

“The latter is more honorable,” her mother teased.

Hope agreed and eventually set her sights on the newsroom.

Everyone who knew her suspected that Hope began writing in the womb. As a baby, paper and pencils were in her hands more than rattles and teething biscuits. By the second grade, she was writing a series of plays about a friendly gang of motorcycle-riding bunnies. In the third grade she wrote a heart-wrenching short story about a homeless mouse that saved his family by winning the state lottery. During the fourth and fifth grades she wrote a one-page family newsletter called the Jensen Report. And as a gangly sixth-grader, Hope compiled an impressive list of addresses for all sorts of distant cousins, teachers, former teachers, and some people they later learned they had no relationship with at all. A four-page spread was mailed every other Monday to forty subscribers in six states plus Canada.

Hope grew into a striking-looking young woman. Through the years, her once-baby blue eyes had added a rich green at their edges. “Those aren’t eyes,” Louise told her, “they’re jewels.” Her often-pony-tailed hair was darker than most would have expected for such light eyes and fair skin.

Hope often thought of the mysterious woman who had left her in the booth at Chuck’s. “Mom, do you think she still lives around here? Does she look like me? Do you think she likes pink lemonade more than yellow, like me? Does she ever think of me?”

“It just might be.” It became Louise’s default answer to most of the impossible questions. Hope’s heart believed that one day she would get real answers, but her head told her otherwise.

Beginning on her second Christmas Eve, and every Christmas Eve thereafter, Hope and Louise Jensen kept the tradition alive by eating an early dinner at Chuck’s. The meal was always the same: chicken, biscuits with real butter, and free pie with all the vanilla ice cream they could eat. They took slow and deliberate bites, telling stories and sharing visions of what lay ahead.

“You never know,” Hope would tell her mother more than once as the third hour approached. “This could be the year.”

“It just might be,” her mother answered. But the mystery woman never came.

“Next year,” Hope said, as if it were a matter of proven fact. “I just know it!”

~

“The precocious one,” as her mother’s friends liked to call Hope, became the first underclassman to be named editor-in-chief of the school paper during her sophomore year of high school. Assigning stories, editing, and selling newspaper advertising was fine, but it was writing the stories that provided the hook. “I think she bleeds ink,” her mother beamed.

Hope’s crowning moment, as high school faded into yearbook memories, was a feature article about the senior class career counselor who would die without a costly liver transplant. The student body raised almost nineteen thousand dollars. The counselor lived, and Hope’s poignant story tied for first place in a nationwide, high-school journalism contest.

To earn extra credit, and because she already knew how she planned to earn her real paychecks, Hope applied for and was awarded an internship at the Daily Record. It wasthe only serious newspaper in four surrounding towns. She did whatever was asked, mastering everything from the bottled water dispenser to the copy and mail-metering machines. Just two weeks after graduation she was offered a paid position.

Hope’s first stop was a tiny cubicle in Classifieds. “It’s a start,” she told her mother the night they photocopied and framed her very first paycheck. Hope the wunderkind was on her road to a Pulitzer Prize and aimed to be the next great American journalist. Headshots of her idols—Bernstein, Woodward, and Graham—formed a square on the wall above her desk. The fourth frame that completed the square contained no photo. Instead, taped under the glass was a white piece of copy paper with the words “I’M NEXT,” written in thick block letters in black marker.

Her job required just twenty-eight hours a week and offered plenty of downtime to take classes at the community college. When people called the paper, the voice on the other end of the phone belonged to the energetic eighteen-year-old writing
the best ads twenty-nine dollars a week could buy. “Hottest House on the Block!” “This Candy Apple Firebird Is a Head Turner!” Nobody wrote them like Hope.

After a year of writing ads and pushing the latest “this week only” special, she was promoted to the community page, where she wrote scintillating stories on upcoming fall carnivals, book fairs, and firehouse bake sales. “I could write this stuff in my sleep,” she told her mother.

“Patience, my dear. Patience.”

Another eighteen months of hard work, plus year-round school, and Hope was in her final term in the journalism program. “It’s time for more,” she told her boss. Before her next payday she was promoted once again, this time to the editorial page. She surprised her mother with the news over takeout.

“You’re a wonder,” Louise said. “I am so proud of you.”

They finished their tacos and chips as Hope fantasized aloud of the accomplishments to come. “I’ll write a feature, I just know I will, and it will land on A1, the front page! They call that above the fold, Mom.”

“I didn’t know—”

“And of course it’ll win Story of the Year. And you just know I’ll be writing for the Washington Post before the plaque even arrives.”

They ate every visible chip crumb, no matter how small, even licking their fingers to pull the final tiny shards up and onto their tongues. After they’d discarded their tinfoil wrappings and paper bags, Louise beckoned her high-flying daughter to the couch for some important news of her own. The words were as simple and stunning as Hope had ever heard.

“I have cancer.”

Louise held her sobbing daughter on the couch until dawn.