The first time I saw him it was snowing. I was standing next to the stove, under the band of light shining down from the range hood, picking through a bag of spinach leaves and throwing the mushy ones into the sink. Outside it was white and pretty and there was just a little frost on the windows, along the edges. The kitchen faced out onto a patchwork of dark backyards sewn together with skinny, faltering fence lines. It was about nine o'clock but I hadn't eaten dinner. It was Sunday night, February 21, 1993. I have a sharp head for detail.

That winter I was a first-year reporter with a newsroom desk at a not-quite-national daily paper. Not even my own desk: I shared it with another new hire, a guy named Vinh Nguyen who sat out the overnights and left crumpled bags of Hickory Sticks in the pencil drawer. My mother loved and hated my job. She thought I got too close to it. Most news is bad news. Her opinion is that I lived a lot of bad news very closely as a child and enough is enough. When I was ten years old my best friend went missing and that's what she's talking about. You can look at this as bad news and it's the understatement of your lifetime. It's likely also the reason I started reporting the news. A balls-out way of handling trauma, wouldn't you say?

My mother admits this is true.

From The Devil You Know by Elisabeth de Mariaffi ©2014. Published by HarperCollins Canada.