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He calls her up to his office on her last day before she leaves for Atlanta.
Neither of them want to talk. No, Will’s spent the past two weeks holed up in his office, hiding behind a cloud of cigarette smoke, sending interns fleeing with his mere presence, whereas MacKenzie’s found every excuse to be out of the newsroom, head buried in her work with tears that she must think no one notices dripping down her nose. That is, when she isn’t busy organizing a rapid-fire move, stretching herself in two directions trying to run away and trying to make sure there isn’t a hole left behind by her absence.
This, Charlie thinks, is why he needs to stop letting people get away with not reporting their relationships to HR.
Mac walks into his office with her hands clasped tightly in front of her, bottom lip wedged in her teeth, looking every bit like a child waiting to be scolded.
Tipping back another two fingers of bourbon, he gently places the tumbler on his blotter, stands gently, smiles even gentler. Opens his arms.
“I didn’t want you to go without a proper goodbye, kiddo.”
He has no idea what happened between her and Will, but if she’s ready to run, then Charlie thinks it might be a good idea for her to go. If only, he hopes, so that they may learn the lessons he and Leona were too stubborn to.
Unable to say anything, Mac steps into his arms and when her fingertips dig into shoulders, he wonders what’s keeping her standing. Gently (gentler still, because Charlie’s been here before, in this doorway) he leads her to one of the chairs across from his desk and sits her down. Sits himself in the chair next to her, and then fishes something out of his pocket.
“I’ve got something for you.”
Mac looks like she’s ready to take nothing from anyone, which is why he needs her to carry this with her. He knows that expression on her face too well. Confused, she takes the object, an obscure silver lighter, from his hands, realization dawning when she flips it over in her palm and sees the engraving.
O. Skinner.
“My father gave this to me, before I went to Vietnam. Not when I went over as a soldier, but when I embedded. For some reason he was more worried when I embedded. Although now that I have a kid myself…” Shaking his head, he starts himself over, and takes her hand in his. “It was his. My mom bought it for him when he was in law school. My dad used to carry that into court cases, claimed he never lost unless he forgot it at home.”
Sniffling, Mac lifts her eyes. This close, he can see the layers of makeup caked over the bruises of exhaustion stamped into her face. “So you’re worried about me? You’re not going to try and get me to stay?”
“The way I figure it, you kids need time to figure it out. And right now, you can’t do that in the same state.” A year, Charlie hopes. He knows that Will gets too angry to talk, too angry to know how to do anything but shut down, shut everyone out. He tries to insert a little levity into the conversation; he’s certain Will won’t even say goodbye to her today, or at all. “Although, you do know that they pay embeds in coupons and meal vouchers, right?”
MacKenzie gives him a watery little laugh, shaking her head. “CNN agreed to salary me, considering my experience. It’s not much, but with that and subletting my apartment… it’s enough.”
He doubts it. Two years at ACN and he knows what Mac’s going rate should be and he knows, has made the phone calls, he knows that CNN’s not paying it.
Squeezing her hand, he makes her keep eye contact. “Okay. But you know MacKenzie, if you ever want to come home…”
“I know.” Stilted and awkward, she stands, but doesn’t let go over his hand. Just gives him the small, sad smile of a child hiding guilt. Which home, Charlie thinks, is the question. Is it New York, or ACN, or Will? She folds her lips into a line. “Goodbye.”
“Bye,” he echoes.
But she doesn’t turn and leave right away, and the look on her face only tells him how much she wants she wants to stay, how quickly this all fell apart, how little it took to do it.
She’s letting Will win Manhattan in the breakup, conceding the island to the man she still loves. Throwing herself into the first dangerous thing that will take her, break her, punish her. And there’s nothing he can do but let her go and know that she has someone to come back to, when she’s ready.
Rubbing her thumb over the worn engraving, she hesitates to pull away from him. “Charlie… I’ll… I’ll bring it back.”
He laughs, a thin veneer of joy, and somehow she smiles briefly, before it falters and dies. Brushing his lips over her knuckles, he stands, and then lets go of her hand.
“You better. I’ll kick your ass, it’s a good lighter.”
Its three years before he sees her again.
He gets a call from an old marine buddy who was involved in her debrief, warning him that she’s in a bad way. Then he picks up the phone to CNN directly, and finds out from the division president that Mac has been let go from her contract, and not to let it get around, but she has PTSD and can’t be trusted to EP a show, don’t you know, she’s unstable? It takes all of three days for that news to get around every news network worth its salt, and all of a sudden, Mac is a week in the states with rent due and bills to pay and is completely, totally unemployable. She’s a liability, Charlie.
So he gets on a plane, and calls to tell her that he’s taking her out to lunch.
He sits across from her at a tiny DC bistro, a few blocks from the ACN bureau. If possible, she looks smaller, paler, sadder (but wiser, Charlie thinks), than three years ago. But he’s been here before, so he knows it’s possible.
“I think I’m done,” she tells him, pulling the silver lighter out of her worn bag and placing it on the table, sliding it across to him.
Charlie scoffs, picking it up like it never left his possession, tapping it down onto the tabletop like punctuation. “You? The indefatigable MacKenzie McHale? Nah. Not when you’re just the girl I need for the job.”
She lifts her eyebrows at that. “What job?”
“Elliot Hirsch is going to ten o’clock and is taking News Night’s EP with him.” Not that any of the people involved know that yet, but, Charlie figures, it’s this or AA. And Mac looks like she might need some meetings herself, so she better get onboard too.
“No.”
He was prepared for denial. Softens his tone, and continues. “He needs you, MacKenzie. He’s turning into a pedestrian hack and his ratings are through the roof but you and I both know he could be doing better. He needs Don Quixote.”
“What?” she sputters, forking salad around her plate. But her fingers are curled too tightly, around the utensil and the arm of her chair, knees pressed together too closely. Eyes darting, making improvised explosives out of boxes stacked for garbage collection.
They all need this.
He punctures the air with an emboldened gesture, lighter in his fist. “Don Quixote, Cervantes-–oh thou bleak and unbearable world, thou art base and debauched as can be; and a knight with his banners all bravely unfurled now hurls down his gauntlet to thee.”
Nervously, firmly, she shakes her head. “No, Charlie, I know you know I’ve been blacklisted, and why. I’m out of the business. No one wants to work with me, or for me. I’m the woman who-–”
“Picked up a gun off a dead marine’s body and killed three insurgents to save her team and another marine.”
Charlie knows very well who Mac is now. He’s been here before.
“We weren’t supposed to be there.” Trembling, she drops the fork onto her plate, steeling herself with both hands on the arms of her chair, eyes trained on her lap.
Gently, slowly, he reaches across the table, palm up. Swallowing hard, Mac pries one of her hands off the chair, and lets him wrap his fingers around her own.
“Funny how it often works like that,” he says. “Mac, you’re not the first person to make bad calls.”
Sadly, she shakes her head again. “We’re no longer just talking about-–he hasn’t answered a single phone call or email since I left, Charlie. He doesn’t want me as his EP. And I don’t blame him, he has the right to hate me for the rest of his life, what I did.”
He’s tried to get it out of Will, time and time again, but the man keeps his pain close to him at all times. Three years later, and still he wonders. “What did you do?”
“He doesn’t want-–”
“You to say. Right.” Three years later, and Mackenzie still loves Will. Probably as much as Will still loves MacKenzie. His mind’s spat out possibilities, over the years. “Was it-–did you-–were you pregnant, and-–”
Her eyes go big, horrified. “God, Charlie, no.”
No, Charlie thinks. If Mac had been pregnant with Will’s baby, she wouldn’t have aborted it. Not that that was how his story ended, either. She shakes her head almost violently, shoulders curling forward, legs shaking from the strain of pressing herself together. They say nothing to each other for a few minutes. Smoothing his thumb over the fine bones of her hands, he watches traffic pass, until she calms herself down.
He gives her a gentle (gently, gentler) smile. “Well what can MacKenzie McHale do, if not the best damn news in the business?”
“Teach?” she says with a shrug.
“You’d kill yourself in a month,” he jokes, but stern, in a way. But gentle, still. He will not let her settle, but he won’t punish her, either. “He’s speaking at Northwestern on Friday. Just go. You and I both know the boy could do better, and this country deserves better. You’ll be Don Quixote, I’ll be Sancho, Will can be the horse.”
He thinks she’s considering it.
“Charlie?” she asks, wiping her eyes.
He squeezes her fingers, not liking how vulnerable she looks. “Yeah, kid?”
“You really think I can still do this?” she whispers.
Can any of them? Him, Mac, Will, Leona? But all Charlie does is squeeze her fingers again, and waits until she looks him in the eyes. “It’s time to come home.”