That night, Shelley knocked on Tami's door. She came in before Tami could say anything. Tami was sitting on her bed, on top of the comforter. She'd just finished with a good cry, and she hid the tissues from Shelly's sight.

Shelley bounced down onto the bed and rolled onto her stomach beside her big sister. With her legs bent at the knees, she began kicking her feet back and forth. Shelley was a restless girl, the one who had always had the worse time sitting still in church. If the regimen was hard on Tami, it was torture for Shelley. She had always endured, but when church let out, she would run to the church playground. Even now, at twelve, Shelley still made a beeline for the jungle gym after services, throwing all that pent-up energy onto the bars.

"What was Mom yelling at you about?" Shelley asked.

"I got into trouble," Tami said. "My grades slipped." She didn't think her baby sister needed to know more than that.

"I heard from Tommy Miller that you went to a party and that you were drinking a…" Shelley lowered her voice and whispered, "beer."

Tami hadn't seen Tommy at any party. She couldn't imagine him at any party. He was sweet, and maybe a little sweet on her, but he was lanky and pimply and geeky. Tami was polite to him, but she also tried to deflect his attentions. "How would he know?"

"So it is true!" Shelley exclaimed.

"Let's just say I did some things I shouldn't have."

"I can't believe it!" Shelley said with giddy excitement.

"How does Tommy know?" Tami asked.

"He heard his mom talking about it to his dad, because his dad heard about it when the church secretary was talking to one of the elders."

Tami sighed. How was she going to show her face in church on Sunday?

"So what are Mom and Dad doing to you?" Shelley asked.

"I'm grounded for the rest of the school year," Tami said. "And I have extra chores."

Shelley's blue eyes grew big. "That's it? I thought Mom would bury you up to your head in the back yard."

[*]

Late that night, Tami headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. She was surprised to hear her parents in there, because her mother usually went to bed early. She paused between the dinning room and the kitchen, her shoulder against the partition. Were they talking about her? Were they coming up with additional punishments?

"You better think about what you're going to say on Sunday," Tami's mother told her father.

"I think about what I'm going to say every week," he replied. "I prepare my sermon all week long."

"I mean what you're going to say when rumors start flying about Tami, because they will."

"I don't know what I can say."

"You're the pastor. You know you're going to have to say something about it."

Her father's sigh was long.

"Edward, if you didn't have your nose in a book all the time," Tami's mother scolded, "maybe this never would have happened!"

"Well maybe if I received more affection from my wife, I wouldn't want to have my nose in a book all the time."

"And maybe if you bothered to be aware of what's going on under your own roof, I'd want to be more affectionate!"

"You didn't know what Tami was doing either, Linda."

"Well at least I gave her a good tongue lashing when I found out! You just stood there as silent as the grave! And then, when I'm trying to correct her, you tell me enough?"

"It was too much," he insisted. "What good does it do? What good has all of your lecturing done her? Did it keep her from sneaking out of the house? From going to parties? From drinking? From almost flunking out of high school?"

Tami hugged herself while she listened to her father list her every sin…all but the worst one, the one he didn't know about…the thing she'd done with Boone.

"You undermined me," Tami's mother hissed. "Right in front of our daughter, you undermined me!"

"I didn't mean to, Linda, but you wouldn't let up!"

"You're too easy on those girls. They have you wrapped around their little fingers. You need to be a man!"

There was stony silence in the kitchen. Tami thought of retreating, but she couldn't bring herself to move. What if they heard her?

The silence was broken by her father's voice. "What happened to you? What happened to that supportive, affectionate, beautiful girl I once fell in love with?"

"I don't know, Edward. Maybe she married a man without a backbone."

Shoes stomped across the kitchen tile. The kitchen door opened. It slammed shut so hard that the entire house shuddered. Tami was preparing to backtrack to her room when her mother came through the doorframe. Startled, she exclaimed, "Tami!"

"I….I was just going to get some water," Tami said.

"Oh. Well, your father's just gone for an evening stroll," Mrs. Hayes replied, smoothing a crease in her nightgown. "I'm headed to bed." She stepped past Tami. "I do hope you think good and long and hard about what you've done."

[*]

The next night, Tami was sitting on her bed, her knees almost to her chest, a book propped open on them. She had to bring her grades back up, but all she could think about was Boone and what she'd lost. What she'd thrown away. Why had she followed him to that room? Why had she agreed to lie down with him? Why hadn't she told him no at some point along the way? She hardly knew him! Why had she believed his lies? Why had she let herself think she mattered to him? And what if her father ever found out? Her mother was the disciplinarian, but it was her father's disappointment she most feared.

There was a knock on her door.

When she whispered a quiet, "Come in," her father came and sat on the edge of her bed, like he'd done when she was little, when he used to read to her from the Chronicles of Narnia before tucking her in. She'd learned more religion from those magical books than she ever had from the Bible.

He put a hand on her ankle, like he had when she was little, and he looked her in the eyes, like he had when she was little, and he smiled, but not like he had when she was little, not that affectionate, warm smile. His smile was sad.

"I'm so sorry, Daddy," she said. She was a true Texas girl, and she would call the man daddy until the day he died.

Her father was quietly reflective, and he rarely criticized her. He would often be off in his own world, somewhere in the depths of his mind. Her mother was right; he always seemed to have his nose in a book. He'd spent so much more time with Tami when she was younger, but as Tami had grown up, she'd needed more independence anyway. His retreat hadn't bothered her the way it apparently had her mother. He was preoccupied, perhaps, but never harsh. He was tender with his daughters, and he'd always trusted Tami to do the right thing.

His disappointment in her must be immense, and she was sorry to have let him down. "I won't drink ever again," she promised him. "I'll never sneak out. I just…I'm fifteen, Daddy! I needed some freedom. I'm in a fishbowl here! All the time!" She was crying now. "My whole life, I've been in a fishbowl! Look at the pastor's daughter!"

He swallowed and looked away. When he looked back, he spoke. "I'm ashamed."

"I know you are," she said. "Because you have to have perfect daughters."

"No. I'm ashamed because I was too absorbed in my studies and in my ministry to see what was happening under my own roof. My first ministry should have been to my family. The Bible says, if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

"Daddy, I did stupid things. That doesn't make you an infidel."

"I said worse than an infidel."

She was accustomed to these religious guilt trips from her mother, but not from her father. "I'm so tired of everything I do reflecting on you!"

"I'm sure you are, Tami, but I don't think you're hearing what I'm saying to you."

"What are you saying to me?"

"You didn't fail me. I failed you."

That was when Tami started to cry. Her father let go of her ankle and came and sat closer to her, and she sat on the edge of the bed to let him hold her, the way he had when she was little, in a great big bear hug.

"God gives us all second chances," he told her. "I believe you'll make better choices in the future. You're going to start hanging out with more respectable friends. You're going to pull up your grades. You're not going to lie to me again. And, when you're older, you're going to find a boy who actually deserves you."

What did that mean? Did he know what she'd done with Boone? He couldn't know, could he? That deacon's son who had seen her at a party – he hadn't seen her go up to the bedroom with Boone, had he? Surely not. If he had, he would have told his mother, who would have told her mother, who would be wailing and gnashing her teeth over the matter.

"You're a beautiful, intelligent, and compassionate girl, Tami. You're precious to me, and you're precious in God's sight. I'm sorry if I haven't told you that enough. You're worthy, and none of these boys you've been hanging out with deserve you. Not a single one of them. And the thing I want you most to know is this – you don't have to do anything with a boy – I mean anything like…" He couldn't say what he meant, though Tami knew what he meant. "You don't have to do anything to make him keep liking you. If you do, he's not worthy of you."

Tami dried her eyes with the back of her hand. Her father sat there, staring at the inspirational poster on her wall, the one with a single set of footprints in the sand, and she thought he knew. He knew she'd thrown her virginity away. He knew, and he was willing himself to believe his words could matter now.

"I love you," he said, and then his jaw jumped, and his eyes watered, and he was instantly gone from her room.