Blessed Are Those Who Weep Read Online Free Page A

bus. What is wrong with me?
    The images of the slain bodies come back full force. I only have time to throw open my car door before I vomit onto the pavement and convulse until I’m dry heaving. From my phone on the passenger seat, Kellogg’s tiny voice asks if I’m okay and repeatedly calls my name.
    When I’m finally done, I wipe my face on my sleeve. It was a delayed reaction, but I feel better. I’ve been operating on autopilot since yesterday.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I say in a hoarse voice. “I don’t know what happened. This has really fucked me up.”
    â€œHead on in when you feel up to it. I’ll see what I can do to try to salvage your job.”

 
    Chapter 6
    I CAN ’ T SHAKE the memory of that girl stretching out her arms toward me or the look on her face—­like I’d thrown her to the wolves. Thinking of her as I drive across the Bay Bridge through thick, low-­hanging fog makes my heart ache and fills me with anger at the same time. She’s not yours . But I can’t help the way my body felt when it held her. As if she were my own child. Something about being the person to find her in that horrific scene has bound me to her. It doesn’t make sense, but it feels more real than anything I’ve felt in my life.
    Driving to work, the landscape is brown and gray today, leached of all color. Usually, emerging from the Caldecott Tunnel into the East Bay means a welcome change in climate from coastal fog to sunny skies. Today, coming out of the tunnel, I’m greeted with more cloud cover that stretches for miles, obscuring the summit of Mt. Diablo in the distance.
    Everything seems ugly, as if my rose-­colored glasses have broken. Even other drivers on the freeway are scowling and flipping the bird and cutting ­people off.
    In the newsroom, a few ­people look at me askance, but most ignore the fact that I was on the front page of the competition today. At least nobody says anything. At this point, they probably expect this kind of thing from me.
    Last year, I was in the paper, too. All the Bay Area papers. For killing a man. Oh yeah, and I was in the paper the year before that, as well. Same thing. Killing someone. Both were bad men. Horrible men. One was a serial killer who preyed on children. The other was a crooked, murdering cop. Even though every single second of my life I regret killing someone, both acts were in self-­defense. If I hadn’t killed them, they would have killed me or someone else.
    Even so, I’ve been in heavy-­duty therapy about it. The guilt will haunt me to the grave. Even my priest, Father Liam—­after hearing me confess the killings nearly every week for six months—­has banned me from confessing it ever again. I’ve considered doing confession at another church without telling him.
    And it has earned me a bit of a reputation in the newsroom. Terrible jokes abound, like the sign in the copy editor area that says, “Don’t fuck with Giovanni’s copy or she’ll send you swimming with the fishes.”
    The sexy cops calendar didn’t help any, either. Someone hung it up in the newsroom, and there is endless teasing about it. And it’s not only jealous women who give me a hard time. The men are just as bad. For instance, Jon, the investigative reporter, will make a big scene, saying, “Gee, I wonder what day it is today? Let me go consult with Giovanni’s hunky boy toy and find out.”
    Finally Kellogg made them all back off. But I’m sure they still talk about me behind my back.
    Today it doesn’t help that all the TVs in the newsroom are showing recaps of the massacre footage, including me driving away in the squad car with the baby. A brief glance reminds me I look like a crazy, homeless lady. Not my finest TV moment. Not in line with la bella figura . At all.
    KXYZ is on the big screen, and even from across the newsroom I can read the