Chapter 20: Pete and Mira

She drove back to Calloway in the spring. Not for a story — she'd told Marcus she was going for personal reasons, which was accurate enough. The mine story was in its natural late phase: federal proceedings, attorney negotiations, the slow grind of institutional accountability. Her presence wasn't required. She went because Pete had called to say Mira was opening her paper again. The Calloway Register had been dormant for three years. Mira had stopped publishing when she left — she hadn't been able to continue and she hadn't trusted anyone else with it, and the town had been without a local paper for the duration. The reopening was not a grand occasion. The first issue was four pages, photocopied, distributed at the diner and the gas station and the library. It covered the status of the mine investigation, the county water board's cleanup requirement, and the results of the spring livestock auction at the Birch Creek ranch. Dana read it at the diner. Pete brought coffee and sat across from her. 'It's good,' Dana said. 'She always was,' Pete said. Mira came in an hour later and stopped when she saw Dana, and the expression that crossed her face was the specific combination of things that Dana would later try to describe to Marcus and fail: gratitude, and recognition, and something adjacent to the feeling of having completed a very long task. 'You came back,' Mira said. 'I wanted to see the paper,' Dana said. Mira sat down. They talked for two hours, about journalism and sources and the specific ethics of a story that involves an entire town's silent complicity. It was the best conversation Dana had in years. She drove home in the evening with the first issue of the Register on the passenger seat.