Better Days by Art Taylor from the May, June 2019 edition of the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.

Maybe I wasn't the only one on our stretch of the North Carolina coast who picked up the Washington Post on a regular basis,

but I doubt anyone else read it like I did, scanning the bylines, measuring the thickness of the paper and the heft of it, stifling the envy.

The new boom in journalism. Who'd have thought it?

You want to go back? Go back, dad said one morning. Breakfast on the rear deck of his boat. The sun still low enough that things weren't yet unbearable.

Well, the heat at least.

I've got a job here now, I said. Evasion better than lying. I edged the post an inch higher

between us. Tucked under the edge of my plate was the Wednesday edition of the paper I worked for now,

unopened. Easy to imagine how that would keep you tied down. "'The sound Dad made was half snort, half laugh.

"'Who else is going to report on the latest garden tour, right?

"'Or some petty little zoning change.'

"'The post partly blocked him, but Dad stared steadily anyway,

"'fork and knife idle in his hands.

"'It was a small table on the stern of his 32-foot back cove, no room to

maneuver away from the conversation. The boat rocked gently, waves lapping at the hull.

Even here on the sound, shielded from the wind off the Atlantic, the waterway was choppy. In the

morning sun, white caps shimmered and glistened. Was that where the phrase

Crystal Coast came from? Potential feature, I thought, already planning to pitch my editor,

then immediately dismissed the idea. Even now, a year after moving down for good, I remained an

outsider. The locals, they probably already knew. A gull landed about an arm's length away.

Dad shoot it off, his gnarled fingers still holding the fork, then dove back into his sausage

and eggs with an irritation that reminded me I hadn't bothered to answer his question. But really,

...