Baby Lessons

measures. Aunt Alice encouraged her to apply for a job at the Bee right away, but Madison had put it off as long as she could. By the time she’d finally relented, she’d been so beaten down by failed job interviews that she’d been thrilled to get her own column...
Until her editor told her what she’d be writing about.
But it was okay. Really, it was. Relocating to Lovestruck was never meant to be permanent. She was simply biding her time here until she could get her real career back on track. Any day now, she’d get the call and she’d be back in the world of high fashion where she belonged.
Meanwhile, she was the Lovestruck Bee’s resident parenting expert. Oh, the irony.
“Madison, I realize the column is new for you—” Floyd Grant, her boss, sighed mightily as he peered at her over the top of his wire-rimmed reading glasses “—but we can’t continue like this.”
Madison took a deep breath, more than prepared to make the case for yesterday’s column. “The Top Ten Infants to Follow on Instagram” had been more than thorough. She’d worked hard on that story. It had been listicle gold, and the photos she’d embedded from the top baby influencer accounts were beyond precious. The Manhattan mommy circuit would have gobbled up every word she’d written.
“Mr. Grant, I...”
Her words drifted off as he picked up a sheet of paper covered in familiar handwriting and dangled it mere inches from her face.
She swallowed hard. “Is that...”
“Another one?” He slammed the letter down on his desk and slid it toward her. “Yes. The second one this week, in fact.”
She glanced down at the missive just long enough to spot the words frivolous, vapid and fraud. The first two didn’t bother her much. If there was one thing that came in handy as a Vogue reporter, it was a thick skin. She’d grown accustomed to critics who didn’t understand the social and cultural importance of fashion. The third word, however, made her stomach churn—probably because it was dead accurate.
Fraud.
Madison didn’t know the first thing about parenting. Nor did she know anything about babies or toddlers or any other variety of children. But in her defense, she’d never claimed to be a modern-day Fred Rogers. She would have been the first one to admit that she knew more about Mr. Rogers’s cardigans than she did about any of the kiddos who lived in his neighborhood. She could have whipped up a few thousand words on his sneakers alone.
But that was not what Floyd Grant and the good people of Lovestruck wanted from her. During her interview, she’d lobbied hard to write about something else...anything else. She might have even begged, but Mr. Grant stood firm. It was the parenting column or nothing at all. And judging by the look on his grizzled face, he was beginning to wish she’d opted for the latter.
“Please, Mr. Grant.” She flashed him her brightest smile, which probably would have been more effective if she’d been able to rebound from the flat-iron disaster. She didn’t feel like herself with her unkempt do. And she definitely didn’t look like herself.
Worst. Day. Ever.
A wayward curl fell in front of her eyes and she made a valiant, yet ultimately unsuccessful, effort to tuck it behind her ear. “I don’t know who keeps writing these letters complaining about my column, but odds are this disgruntled person is nothing but a troll.”
“Excuse me?” Her boss’s eyebrows rose.
Madison blinked. So now she was going to have to explain internet slang to her editor-in-chief. “A troll. It means someone who intentionally tries to start arguments online, usually just for the sake of getting attention.”
“But this—” he jabbed at the letter with his pointer finger “—isn’t simply an online comment. It’s a letter to the editor, and you know what that means.”
“You’re going to print it, aren’t you?”
“I don’t have a choice.” He shook his head. “It’s Bee policy to print every letter to the editor.”
Madison was aware. She’d just sort of hoped the policy had changed after the previous three letters had gone to press.
She stared at the most recent one, marveling yet again at the fact that someone had taken the time to complain about her column in longhand and send it to the Bee via snail mail. This wasn’t a garden variety troll. Madison couldn’t help but admire his or her persistence.
His, she thought. That boxy lettering seemed distinctly masculine, especially the aggressive little cross marks on the z’s. Her attention snagged on the twin letters, and she made the mistake of reading the entire sentence.
It’s puzzling to me why the author of the parenting column seems to care more about aesthetics than actual children.
Her throat grew thick, and to her complete and utter horror, tears blurred her vision. Ugh, why was she letting a stupid troll get to her?
“I care about children,” she said quietly.
She wasn’t a monster, for crying out loud. Parenting just wasn’t something that came naturally to someone whose own mom had passed away before she took her first steps.
“Of course you do.” Something in Mr. Grant’s gaze softened. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand over his face. “But you’ve got to change things up. Your troll is calling for your resignation if you can’t come up with any practical childcare advice.”
“My resignation?” Nope. Not happening.
The only thing that would look worse on her résumé than writing for a small-town paper would be writing for no one at all. At least she had her own column, even if she wasn’t allowed to use her actual name on the byline. Instead, the Bee’s readers knew her simply as Queen Bee. Super professional. Still, she couldn’t screw it up. She just couldn’t.
“I’m not quitting.” She shook her head. Another loose curl fell into her field of vision, but this time she didn’t bother trying to smooth it back into place. “I’ll write something more hands-on. I promise.”
Maybe she’d come up with a recipe or something.