Free Death of A High Maintenance Blonde (Jubilant Falls Series Book 5) by Debra Gaskill Page A

headline read PTSD behind Prentiss dismissal. The more sympathetic Sunday morning cable news shows ran entire episodes about the cost on journalists of covering so much trauma day in and day out; others concentrated on her ego and the dangerous risks she took to get her stories.
    There were hearings on Capitol Hill and several high-ranking news officials took early retirements or were fired.
    After a few other stories ( Does Prentiss have a future in journalism? Prentiss still on medical leave ), and her refusal to surface anywhere, the interest stopped.
    If she was ashamed of the failed Syrian story, I certainly could understand. But continuing to hide? How many national stories had been discredited without the reporter going down in flames? Reporters came back from worse without crumbling. National news figures had careers that continued long after the famous or infamous stories they were part of made it to journalism classrooms across the country.
    You didn’t, a voice inside my head said.
    I sighed and picked my wallet up from the bedside table, pulling out a photo of Noah from my wallet. It was the Stanford University president handing him his college diploma.
    No, I didn’t, I answered. But my downfall wasn’t something I wrote. It was something I did and kept doing until it destroyed my life, marriage and my family.
    *****
    From the day Bitch Goddess and I tied the knot in a Philadelphia judge’s chambers, drinking was a part of our marriage. From the matching silver flasks we got as wedding presents, to the mid-day martinis and the after-work beers, our alcohol consumption was legendary. On the weekends, our apartment was the center of the party—whatever party was going on. Sports victories or losses, election night celebrations after deadline, it didn’t matter: Come one, come all to the Huffinger household where the liquor flowed like water.
    Bitch Goddess slowed down her drinking when she learned she was pregnant with Noah, but never stopped completely. By that time, we’d moved to Boston, where I covered city hall and she was the restaurant critic and features writer. Before long, we were in Phoenix, then Dallas and back to Philadelphia, where Bitch Goddess’s perfect looks and unflappable style helped her move from the newspaper to morning anchor at one of the television stations so she could be home from work by the time Noah’s school day ended.
    Somewhere along the line Noah absorbed our alcoholic ethos, but we didn’t see the damage it was doing. A suspension in high school for drinking was funny the first time. By the third time, I was pissed—not that he’d done it, but that he couldn’t hold his liquor.
    “For Christ sake, if you’re going to drink, do it right, and don’t get caught,” I said.
    Of course, that was the wrong message to send. Noah did just what I told him: drank more and hid it better, the same thing Bitch Goddess and I did, day after day.
    We switched to vodka when our bosses expressed concern. At the time, rehab wasn’t anything that was covered by the newspaper’s health care. Even if it was, neither one of us wanted to admit we had a problem.
    I wasn’t a drunk! I was a newspaperman ! I yelled at my editor. And my wife doesn’t have an alcohol problem either! She runs five miles a day, for god sake. No drunk could do that!
    Then came the winter night celebrating a scoop on some shenanigans at city hall that brought my life as I knew it to an end.
    Noah was home for the weekend from his job. We eschewed the Pen and Pencil, the press club where many of Philly’s journalists did their drinking and met at another bar downtown. By midnight, Noah was as drunk as I was when he got behind the wheel of my car and we headed home that awful snowy night.
    I passed out somewhere along the forty-minute drive home, I came to as I felt the car swerve. Metal moaned as it smashed against a tree; the car rolled into the ditch, followed by Noah’s groan, then sickening silence.