For the rest of her sophomore year, Tami came straight home from school, did her chores, and studied until dinner, and again from dinner until bed time. She tried desperately to make up for all she hadn't learned the first three-fourths of the year. She managed to pass all of her classes except Geometry, but she had devastated her cumulative GPA.

When she handed her father her final report card, he was reading in the armchair in his study. The Reverend Hayes closed his book, which had some Latin title Tami couldn't understand, and set it on the end table. He rustled the paper in front of himself and read the grades. "I presume these aren't forged this time. I suppose you would have given yourself better year-end grades."

"Yes, sir. I'm so sorry I lied. I will never lie to you again."

[*]

Tami had no intention of dating anyone her junior year. She wanted to concentrate on school, and she was also planning to try out for the volleyball team, which could mean early morning practices and Saturday games. She would be too busy for boys, and, besides, she'd made a promise to herself that she wasn't going to make the same mistake she'd made with Boone.

But Mo McArnold was no Boone.

That summer after her sophomore year, he began attending her church regularly. He sat with his grandparents three pews behind her, week after week. He talked to her before church, at the fellowship table, and after service in the field out front where boys threw footballs and girls giggled about which was the cutest. He joined the youth choir, and his voice was beautiful. Tami couldn't believe he was both an athlete and a singer, and she couldn't deny that he was cute.

So when, the last week of summer, Mo finally phoned and asked her out, she walked the mile and a half from the parsonage to the church. She wasn't going to sneak around this time. She was going to ask her father's permission directly.

Tami entered through the foyer of the church and walked down the covered underpass through the courtyard to the classroom wing, where her father's office also resided. She loved the church smell that inhabited these old buildings, brick mingled with wood and the scent of flowers. There was a new nondenominational church meeting in the firehouse now, where the congregation sat on folding chairs each Sunday morning, and Tami couldn't imagine feeling reverent in such a space. Sometimes she thought she loved this building more than she loved the people in it, though she was trying to learn to love them better. They were all of them human, her father had told her, even the gossips and the busy bodies, all flesh and blood creatures just like her, trying to figure out how to live.

When she arrived outside her father's office, Tami saw that his door was closed and asked the secretary if he was available.

"He's in a counseling session," she said, "but he should be done in a few minutes."

Tami waited on the couch outside his office. It was remarkable, she thought, how many people her father counseled, how many secrets he must know, and yet he always kept their confidences, no matter how much his parishioners might gossip about him.

The door to her father's office opened, and out came Tami's mother. Startled, she asked Tami, "What are you doing here, dear?"

"I just wanted to talk to Daddy."

Mrs. Hayes glanced behind herself, where another man was emerging from the Reverend's office. "I'll see you two next week," the man said and headed down the hall. Tami had never seen him at church before.

"Are you helping Daddy…counsel?" Tami asked her mother. She couldn't imagine her mother playing such a role. Mrs. Hayes was not precisely easy to talk to.

"No, we were just…I…we…" Tami had never seen her mother look so flustered.

"Are you here to see me, princess?" asked her father, who had just appeared in the open door frame.

Tami nodded and rose from the couch. Her mother said, "I'll see you at home, Edward. Would you like lasagna tonight?"

"Yes," he answered, and then he seemed to think. "Please. You make a fantastic lasagna, Linda. I really appreciate the time you take to cook for all of us."

Tami's mother smiled at him, a sort of humored smile, and she walked on.

Reverend Hayes motioned Tami inside his office. He shut the door behind her and sat down across from her in his big, rolling desk chair. "What can I do for you, sweetheart?" he asked.

"What was Mom doing in here when you were counseling someone? And who was that man?"

Tami's father rolled a pen across the calendar on his desk, forward then back. "Never you mind that," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Daddy! What's going on? Is everything okay?"

He sighed. He leaned back in his chair, a hand on each arm, and bounced. "You promised you wouldn't lie to me ever again. I suppose I should be honest with you, too."

"Please do."

"I wasn't counseling that man. He was counseling me. And your mother. He's…he's a marriage counselor. From our sister church in Odessa. He comes once a week for our sessions."

"How long has this been going on?" Tami asked.

"Two months now. Listen, Tami, I don't want to alarm you. We just…we've both agreed we need a little help."

They needed a lot of help, Tami thought. "Okay. I'm glad you and mom are seeing a counselor."

"I love your mother," he said firmly.

Tami wasn't sure how true that was. She believed he was faithful to her mother, but that wasn't quite the same thing as love.

"Don't tell Shelley about this," he continued. "I don't want to worry her. You're old enough to…understand, but Shelley - "

"- I get it," Tami told him. "And speaking of me being old enough…" She told him that Mo had asked her out and that she wanted to accept.

"We said you could date when you were sixteen, Tami. And your recent…escapades…have made me think of revising that age to seventeen."

"I'll be sixteen in less than two months. And Daddy, all the other girls started dating their freshman years! Some started in 8th grade!"

"Well they must not have fathers to look out for them, then."

"They all have fathers. Well…most of them. At least half, anyway." She was suddenly very glad to have a father, even if she was going to have to convince him to let her date Mo. Tami smiled her sweetest smile, the one she knew tugged on her father's heart strings. "Don't you like him?" she asked. "He's a good Christian boy. He goes to youth group. He sings in the choir."

"He's also a football player."

"What's wrong with football players?" Tami's family went to the high school games sometimes, because they were the social nexus of the town, but not more than three or four times a season. She hadn't grown up with football games lighting up the television. Her father would rather read a book than watch sports. Tami wasn't as dismissive of football as her father was; she could enjoy a game when she had someone to root for, but she didn't understand what made it the center of the universe in Texas. She'd never wanted to be a cheerleader or a rally girl. "It'll be fun to see Mo play," she said.

"This town is obsessed with football. And what's the point of it, really? It's so tribal."

"Daddy – "

He waved a hand. "I've seen some of these boys, Tami, these football players. They can become like idols in a town like this, and they can let it go to their heads. They develop a sense of entitlement. They get in trouble, and they get away with it, because football is so very important. More important than academics. More important than morality."

"Daddy, you're exaggerating."

"They treat girls as a game, these football players. They treat them as a conquest to be put up on the scoreboard."

"Mo's not like that, Daddy. You know he's not."

"I don't think he is," her father admitted, "but I think he's going to be exposed to a world of temptation before long. I gather he's a good player and he'll be put on the varsity team this year. He'll probably be the starting quarterback before the season is over."

"So? It's not as if he's at all like - " she was about to say Boone, but she stopped herself. She still hoped her father knew nothing about that. "He's not like that."

"Why do you like him? Because he's a handsome young fellow, I suppose?"

She smiled. "He's sweet. He always says the nicest things to me. He opens doors for the old ladies, helps them to their cars. You've seen it. He sings well, too." She thought about what her father would care about, and ventured, "I think he gets good grades."

Reverend Hayes rocked in his chair. "You know his parents are going through a difficult divorce?"

"He told me. That's why he started to come to church here. Everyone in his parents' church know about it…talk about it. He just wanted to go someplace else."

"His mother thinks we're heathen, what with the infant baptism. She's not thrilled about Mo coming to this church with his grandparents."

"I know. He told me. What does any of that have to do with me dating him?"

Her father sighed. "Nothing, I suppose. He just doesn't have a very good example of a relationship in his parents."

Tami raised an eyebrow.

Her father nodded his head. "Touché," he said. "But we're working on it, your mother and I." He cleared his throat. "You have my permission to go on a date with Mo McArnold," he announced. "But he picks you up at our house. He comes inside, and he talks to me and to your mother. He tells us where he's taking you. And he has you home by 9:30."

"9:30!"

"9:45."

"10:30, Daddy, please."

"9:55. And that's my final offer."

Tami smiled. "Accepted." She stood from the chair. "Maybe you should date."

"What?" he asked.

"Maybe you and Mom should date."

He tapped the arms of his chair. "Maybe we should."