by Robin Caroll
Sam turned back to the youth room. “Ms. Martha?”
The youth director smiled. “What can I do for you, Sam?”
“I have a question.”
Ms. Martha leaned against the desk. “Sounds serious.”
Sam hopped up on the desk across from Ms. Martha’s. “I have a friend who I just found out isn’t a Christian.”
“Ahh.”
Sam waited, but Ms. Martha just stared at her.
“So, I, um . . . well . . .”
Ms. Martha smiled. “What’s bugging you, Sam?”
“I told her about my faith. Why I believe like I do, but she doesn’t seem to care.” Yeah, Mom said it wasn’t her job to change Grace’s mind about God, but Sam just felt so . . . well, guilty. She had eternal life and knew it, but Grace didn’t.
“You know, Sam,” Ms. Martha began, “Sometimes changes in the heart start long before you see any outward changes in the person. When did you share your faith with your friend?”
“This week.”
Ms. Martha smiled. “Then the gospel you shared is probably working its way from her head where she heard it, down into her heart.”
“But she’s heard about God before. She just doesn’t believe.” And it really worried Sam. What if something happened to Grace?
“You can’t make someone believe, Sam. Faith can’t be forced.”
“I don’t understand that.” How would she reach Grace? Just sharing wasn’t enough.
“Let me put it this way. You know how your mom and dad might love asparagus and eat it a lot, but you don’t like it?” Ms. Martha asked.
Sam wrinkled her nose. “Asparagus is gross.”
Ms. Martha grinned. “So your parents love it and eat it a lot and want you to try it.”
“They’re always telling me I should keep trying it. As if one day, out of the blue, I’m going to love it.”
“Right. And they’ll tell you it’s good for you, that it has amazing nutritional value: lots of zinc, B6, vitamin C, K, phosphorus, and copper.”
“Gross is still gross.”
Ms. Martha nodded. “You trust your parents, right?”
Sam nodded, but she still wasn’t going to eat asparagus.
“So your parents tell you asparagus is good for you, and you trust your parents, but you still don’t like the asparagus.”
“Right. It’s gross, no matter if they try to hide it under melted cheese or not.”
“That’s not the point.” Ms. Martha grinned and shook her head. “Now, I offered you asparagus at the cookout, and you told me it was gross.”
“It is. What is it with you people and the green stalks?”
“Stay with me, here, Sam. So you wouldn’t take the asparagus from me either, but you trust me, don’t you?” Ms. Martha laughed. “I’m going to assume you do or you wouldn’t be here talking to me right now.”
Sam grinned. “Well, if you keep trying to shove asparagus down my throat all the time . . .”
Ms. Martha snapped her fingers and pointed. “That’s it.”
“Huh?” Sam must have missed something.
“That’s the point.”
Ms. Martha wasn’t making any sense. “What’s the point?”
“We were just talking about your parents trying to make you eat asparagus, then I talked about offering you some, and you said you felt like we kept trying to shove asparagus down your throat.”
Sam didn’t get it. “I was teasing you, Ms. Martha.”
“I know. Well, for the most part.” She smiled. “But you certainly aren’t willing to try any asparagus right now, are you?”
“Uh, no.” Sam had no clue what Ms. Martha was talking about. If she’d been confused before, Sam was really confused now.
“But, let’s just say, that Makayla was eating a snack and munching on something you didn’t recognize, but she sure was enjoying her snack. She offered you a bite and you took some. It wasn’t what you expected, but it wasn’t too terribly bad. That’s when Makayla told you it was dried asparagus.”
“Oh, that’s really gross. And Makayla wouldn’t eat the stuff either.”
“But let’s say she did and you took a bite and it wasn’t too terribly awful. So, now you’ve tried the asparagus and it’s not deadly. You don’t want to go out and order any, but you aren’t going to gag the next time someone offers you some. And maybe, later down the road, you might actually try it again, cooked a different way.”
Sam crinkled her nose. “I don’t think so.”
Ms. Martha laughed. “Just stay with me for a minute.”
“Okay.”
“Just like your parents offered you asparagus and I did and you refused, telling me you didn’t want it crammed down your throat . . .” Ms. Martha pointed. “Maybe your friend doesn’t want faith crammed down her throat. But then, what if just like you took a bite of a snack Makayla offered you, and that little bite of asparagus wasn’t all bad, your friend took that little piece of faith and ingested it?”
“So maybe down the line, my friend will try a little more of faith, right?”
Ms. Martha nodded. “Maybe. There’s no guarantee, Sam, just like there’s no guarantee you’ll ever grow to like asparagus. But restaurants won’t stop putting it on the menu just because you don’t like it, so you’ll still have opportunity to try it in the future.”
“And just because she hasn’t accepted Jesus doesn’t mean we should stop sharing our faith with her, right?”
“Right.” Ms. Martha smiled. “Make sense?”
“Yes. Thanks. Maybe I can invite her to the youth rally.”
“Of course, but don’t get your feelings hurt if she says no the first time. Sometimes it’s a process. Now you’d better hurry to church or your dad’s going to come hunt you down. The services have already started.”
Sam hopped down off the desk and hugged Ms. Martha. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” Ms. Martha called after her.
Sam stopped at the door and turned around. “Ms. Martha?”
“Yeah?”
“Seriously, you have to lay off the asparagus.” Sam smiled and headed down the hall. She turned the corner and heard voices coming from the ladies’ Sunday school classroom.
“I heard the police gave her a lie detector test and she passed with flying colors,” a lady’s voice said.
Sam turned, hearing their voices come closer. There was nowhere to go. Panicking, she slipped into a closet. The smell of old hymn books and mustiness accosted her. She pinched her nose to avoid sneezing.
“Are you sure, Vanya?” No mistaking that voice. It belonged to Ms. Kirkpatrick.
“I’m positive. Why, our own church member, Charles Sanderson, is the one who oversaw the testing.”
Sam pressed her lips together. Dad?
“Well, if Charles Sanderson says Jessica Townsend passed her lie detector test, then I believe him,” Ms. Kirkpatrick said.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Ms. Vanya answered, her voice getting harder to hear as she moved away from the closet.
Dad gave Jessica Townsend a lie detector test? And he didn’t tell Sam?
She waited ten more seconds before cracking open the closet door and peeking outside. No one was around. She dusted off her arms after shutting the door. She sneezed. And again. Great. Now her allergies were going to go haywire.
Sam went into the ladies’ room and blew her nose and washed her hands, then rushed to the sanctuary. She ran into her dad, literally, in the entry.
“Where have you been? I was getting worried about you,” he said as he reached out to steady her.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I was talking with Ms. Martha and time just got away.” She straightened and headed into the main room. She quietly slipped into her regular pew. Dad sat beside her.
As the congregation stood to join the worship team in singing, Makayla turned and shot her a questioning look.
Sam mouthed the word “later” and kept singing. It’d be fun to explain the aspara
gus to Makayla.
After church was over, Makayla handed Chloe off to her dad, then returned to Sam. “Okay, so what took you so long? Your dad asked me where you were and I didn’t know what to tell him.” She frowned. “Tell me you weren’t snooping around or eavesdropping.”
Heat filled Sam’s face so she could only imagine how deep her blush was.
“You were!” Makayla shook her head.
“Not the whole time. I really was talking to Ms. Martha.”
“About what?”
“Asparagus.” Sam chuckled at Mac’s confused expression. “I’ll explain in a minute, but on the way to the sanctuary, I did overhear Ms. Vanya and Ms. Kirkpatrick talking.”
Makayla shook her head. “Those two again? You know how they like to talk.”
“But they were right last time I heard them talking, and I have a feeling they’re right this time too.” Sam quickly told her what she’d overheard. “And Dad didn’t even tell me.”
Makayla didn’t say anything, but she had that look: wide-eyed innocence mixed with stern librarian.
“What?”
“Well, he can’t really tell you things like that, Sam. It might cost him his job.”
“Like he didn’t tell me about the bomb details but released the information to all the other press outlets.” Sam shook her head. “His excuse then was that I hadn’t asked. Like I knew the information would be available? No, Mac, he just doesn’t want his captain’s son, Doug York, to go whining to his daddy that I know more about the case than he does.”
“I don’t know . . .” Makayla wore uneasiness as smooth as she wore her hairband.
“I do.” She wouldn’t tolerate Mac defending Dad. Not when he had all but told her she wasn’t doing her job. Even worse, he’d told Mom. “So it’s up to me to get information when and where I can.”
“I think you ought to step away for a bit. You’re upset and not thinking this through. You don’t want to act now and then regret it later, after you can’t do anything to fix it.”
“Ha. There’s always a retraction option,” Sam teased.
But Makayla wasn’t laughing. “You and I both know a retraction is not a joke.”
“Ma-kay-la,” Mrs. Ansley hollered out.
“Mark my words, if you spout off when you’re upset, you’ll regret it.” Makayla wagged her finger in front of Sam. “Call or text me later, girl.” She turned and ran to her car before her mother could call for her again.
Sam headed across the hot parking lot to meet Dad. It didn’t matter how Makayla tried to justify why Dad withheld the information from her, the point was that he did. Knowing how important this was to her, and even after she offered to let the story go for his sake. Sam gritted her teeth. There was no excuse.
Dad already had the air conditioner on high as she climbed into the front seat and fastened her seatbelt. “That’s twice in one day you’ve pulled a disappearing act on me.” He grinned as he put the truck in drive. “Are you practicing to be a magician?”
She couldn’t even smile at his lame joke. It also probably didn’t help that she was more than a little upset with him.
“What do you want for lunch? We have Big Orange, Bravo, Chipotle . . . well, you know what all’s in the area. What sounds good?”
“I don’t care.” She wasn’t really hungry, to be perfectly honest.
“What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?” Dad asked as they stopped at the red light.
“Dad, did Jessica Townsend pass a lie detector test about being involved with the planting of the bomb?”
“Where did you hear that?” Dad’s expression went as tight as the seatbelt across Sam’s chest.
The car behind them honked.
“Dad, the light’s turned green.”
He went through the intersection, then whipped into the Walgreen’s parking lot. Dad put the car in park but left the engine running. “Samantha, where did you hear about Jessica Townsend’s lie detector test?”
“So it’s true?” She had to admit, she was a little intimidated by Dad’s intensity, but she needed to prove she was a real reporter. Had to prove it.
“Samantha!”
“She passed a lie detector test?”
He was not amused. “Samantha, I need to know who told you that.”
She shook her head. “I can’t reveal my sources.”
“That’s twice you’ve gotten information that hasn’t been released. I need to know where you heard this. I’m not playing.”
“I’m not either, Dad.” She shifted in her seat as the car seemed to get hotter, and it had nothing to do with the temperature outside and everything to do with Dad’s mood. “You know that a good reporter never reveals her sources.” Especially when the information was obtained through eavesdropping methods.
“Samantha, this is serious. Someone in my department is talking, and that’s not allowed. This is how cases are lost.” Dad’s grip was so tight on the steering wheel that Sam could see the veins in his hands. Even under his tan.
But she couldn’t give in, no matter what. Just like he had to be professional, so did she. “I can’t, Dad.”
“Even if I ground you?”
He couldn’t be serious, could he? Grounding her for not ratting someone out? This had to be some sort of test or something. She took a deep breath. Even if he did ground her, she had to stick by the journalism rule. No one would ever trust her if she gave up a source.
She sat as straight as she could and crossed her arms over her chest. “Even then. I can’t give up my sources.”
CHAPTER 19
RULES AREN’T MEANT TO BE BROKEN
I can’t believe he threatened to ground me.” Sam paced her bedroom, pressing her iPhone close to her face. She’d been so angry, wanting to call her best friend and rant, that she hadn’t even bothered to use her Bluetooth headset.
“Calm down. You’re giving me a headache,” Makayla said.
“Sorry.” Sam took two more steps, then turned suddenly. She stepped on Chewy, who’d been trailing her since she got home. “Oh, sorry, Chewy.” She bent down and scratched the dog’s head.
“What did you do to that sweet puppy?”
“Nothing. Stepped on her. She was behind me and I didn’t see her. Can you believe he threatened to ground me if I didn’t give up my source?” She still couldn’t believe him.
“But he didn’t.”
No, she wasn’t going to let him off the hook. “But he threatened to, Mac. That’s wrong on so many levels that I can’t even begin to count the ways.”
“I tried to warn you not to say anything when you were this upset.”
“This upset? I’m this upset because he threatened to ground me for not telling who told me information for my article.”
“Sam, no one told you the information. You were eavesdropping.”
Why did Mac sound like an adult all of a sudden? It was really annoying. Seriously annoying.
“It doesn’t matter. Reporters have sources and we’re supposed to protect them. Think how it would be if word got out that I’d revealed a source to the police. I’d never get anyone to talk to me. They wouldn’t trust me enough to talk to me.”
“Listen to yourself. A source didn’t talk to you in the first place.”
“That is not the point.”
“You would rather get grounded than tell your dad you heard about the lie detector test by eavesdropping?”
Sam let out a long, slow breath. Why was Makayla being so dense about this? “Mac, it doesn’t matter if someone told me to my face, told someone else to tell me, left me a voice mail, emailed it to me, or if it was overheard — I still wouldn’t tell.”
“But don’t you see? All those other examples you gave were about someone giving you the information. That isn’t the case. Here, you took the information without permission.”
Sam paced faster. “So, you’re saying I stole the information?”
Chewy jumped on the bed and stared at Sam with big ey
es.
Makayla didn’t answer for so long that Sam started to wonder if the call had been dropped. But, no, she could still hear her breathing. “Mac?”
“Well, you kinda did, Sam.” Her voice was very low, her tone soft.
And it made Sam even more mad. “I didn’t steal information. I overheard something that wasn’t confirmed, so I tried to get confirmation from a reliable source. He confirmed in a no-comment kind of manner.” She turned and stomped even harder on her next pacing lap. “I am under no obligation to tell him how or where or who I get my information from. Period.”
“You don’t need to yell at me. It’s rude when I’m just pointing out the truth.”
“You accused me of stealing information. That’s rude.”
“There’s no talking reason to you right now when you’re so mad,” Makayla said.
“You’re right. Bye.” Sam ended the call and tossed her phone onto her bed. “Uuuuh.” She fisted her hands into balls. “I can’t believe she took Dad’s side.” She turned and made another lap in her bedroom. “Stealing information,” she mumbled. “I didn’t steal anything.”
Her cell phone rang. Probably Makayla calling back to apologize. Sam wasn’t quite ready to get over it.
Ring-ring-ring!
Well, she couldn’t expect Mac to understand the strict rules of journalism.
Sam snatched up the phone. “Hello.”
“Hi, Sam. It’s Lana.”
“Hey, girl.” Sam dropped to the bed and rolled onto her back, letting out a long breath. “What’s up?”
“I just wanted to thank you and your dad again for the other night. I was really freaked out.”
“No worries.” Sam ran her fingers through Chewy’s thick fur and wondered if Chewy got as hot as Sam’s long hair made her.
“I think Mom and Dad might make it this time around in counseling.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. This time they’re seeing a counselor the church recommended.”
“Oh, that’s great, Lana.”
“And Dad’s getting some grief counseling for losing his twin brother. They think that might’ve been the start of some of his anger issues. We have our first family counseling session tonight.”
Sam didn’t even know what she should say, so she just shared what she felt. “I’ll be praying for all of you.”
