What defined the artist? Were artists only those who created what was perceived as the beautiful or the shocking, those who formed some piece of work that delivered a visceral punch? In painting, in music, in literature or theater?

If so, did that make the rest of the world nothing more than the audience? Passive observers whose only contribution was applause or criticism?

What became of the artist without the audience?

Not his usual sort of column, Flynn mused, but it had been kicking around in his head since the night he and Malory had searched The Gallery. It was time to let it out.

He could still see the way she’d looked in that storeroom. A stone figure in her arms and grief swimming in her eyes. In the three days since, she’d kept him and everyone else at arm’s length. Oh, she paid lip service to being busy, to following different angles on her quest, to putting her life back in order.

Though from his point of view there’d never been any real disorder to it.

Still, she refused to come out. And she wouldn’t let him in.

Maybe the column was a kind of message to her.

He rolled his shoulders, tapped his fingers on the edge of his desk until his mind shifted back and found the words.

Wasn’t the child who first learned to form his own name with letters a kind of artist? One who was exploring intellect, coordination, and ego. When the child held that fat pencil or bright crayon in his fist, then drew those letters on paper, wasn’t he creating a symbol of himself with lines and curves? This is who I am, and no one else is quite the same.

There is art in the statement, and in the accomplishment.

What about the woman who managed to put a hot meal on the table in the evening? To a Cordon Bleu chef, this might be a pedestrian feat, but to those who were baffled by the directions on a can of condensed soup, having that meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and string beans hit the table in unison was a great and mysterious art.

“Flynn?”

“Working,” he snapped without looking up.

“You’re not the only one.” Rhoda shut the door at her back, marched over and sat in a chair. She folded her arms across her chest and stared holes at Flynn through her square-framed glasses.

But without the audience, ready and willing to consume the art, it becomes congealed leftovers to be dumped . . . “Damn it.”

He shoved back from his keyboard. “What?”

“You cut an inch from my feature.”

His hands itched to pick up his Slinky. And wrap its coils around Rhoda’s skinny throat. “And?”

“You said it was running a full twelve inches.”

“And what you had was eleven solid inches, and an inch of fill. I cut the fill. It was a good piece, Rhoda. Now it’s a better piece.”

“I want to know why you’re always picking on me, why you’re always cutting my pieces. You barely put a mark on John’s or Carla’s, and they’re all over my work.”

“John handles sports. He’s been handling sports for over a decade. He’s got it down to a science.”

Art and science, Flynn thought and made a quick shorthand note to remind himself to work it into the column. And sports . . . If anyone watched the way a pitcher sculpted the dirt on the mound with his feet until it was exactly the shape, the texture, the slope he—

“Flynn!”

“What? What?” He snapped back, rewound the tape in his mind. “And I do edit Carla when and if she needs it. Rhoda, I’m on a deadline myself here. If you want to get into this, let’s schedule some time tomorrow.”

Her mouth pruned. “If we don’t resolve this now, I won’t be coming in tomorrow.”

Instead of reaching for his action figure of Luke Skywalker and imagining the Jedi knight drawing his light saber and blasting the superior smirk off Rhoda’s face, Flynn sat back.

The time had come, he decided, to do the blasting himself.

“Okay. First, I’m going to tell you I’m tired of you threatening to walk. If you’re not happy here, not happy with the way I run the paper, then go.”

She flushed scarlet. “Your mother never—”

“I’m not my mother. Deal. I run the Dispatch. I’ve been running it for nearly four years now, and I intend to run it for a long time. Get used to it.”

Now her eyes filled, and since Flynn considered tears fighting dirty, he struggled to ignore them. “Anything else?” he asked coolly.

“I’ve been working here since before you could read the damn paper.”

“Which may be our problem. It suited you better when my mother was in charge. Now it suits you better to continue to think of me as a temporary annoyance, and an incompetent one at that.”

Rhoda’s mouth dropped open in what appeared to be sincere shock. “I don’t think you’re incompetent. I just think—”

“That I should stay out of your work.” The genial tone was back in his voice, but his expression remained frigid. “That I should do what you tell me instead of the other way around. That’s not going to happen.”

“If you don’t think I do good work, then—”

“Sit down,” he ordered as she started to rise. He knew the drill. She would storm out, slam things around, glare at him through the glass, then make sure her next piece slid in only minutes before deadline.

“It so happens I think you do good work. Not that it matters a hell of a lot coming from me because you don’t have any confidence in or respect for my skill or my authority. I guess that makes it tough for you because you’re a journalist, we’re the only game in town, and I’m in charge. I don’t see any of those factors changing. Next time I ask for twelve inches, give me a solid twelve and we won’t have a problem.” He tapped the tip of his pencil against the desk while she gaped at him.

Perry White, he mused, might’ve handled it better, but he figured he was in the ballpark. “Anything else?”

“I’m going to take the rest of the day off.”

“No, you’re not.” He swiveled back to his keyboard. “Have that piece on the elementary school expansion on my desk by two. Close the door on your way out.”

Flynn went back to typing, pleased when he heard the door click closed instead of slam. He waited thirty seconds, then shifted in his chair enough to look through the glass wall. Rhoda was sitting at her desk as if paralyzed.