Christmas in a Snowstorm

by Lois Richer

  “You own Possibilities. You’re my landlord?” She couldn’t make it sink in. “Here as well as the house I rented?” When Sam nodded, she felt as if someone had sucker punched her.

  “Dad looks after things for me when I’m on assignment. He’s the one who arranged to have the renovations done on this building. I didn’t know about it. He said he’d sent me an email explaining, but I was getting so many hate emails after that story that I didn’t read most of my inbox.”

  “And?” She had to hear it all now.

  “He’d already contacted the lawyer before I got home, agreeing to rent to you. The first I knew about it was when you got the letter. But I supported his decision completely because I knew you’d make this place a success.”

  Joy struggled to process his words. So, it wasn’t her strength or courage or capability that made her bakery a success. It was Sam.

  “I can’t believe you told me so many lies,” she whispered.

  “Not lies, Joy. Never.” Sam seemed to know what was coming because he said, “Ask me anything you want.”

  “Those streetlights that some donor paid to have rewired.” She bit her lip. “That was you?”

  “Yes, but please don’t tell anyone,” he said quietly.

  “More secrets.” Joy heard the snide tone in her own voice and regretted it, but the feeling she’d been duped by the person she’d most trusted had turned her world upside down and she couldn’t get a grip.

  “Yes, secrets, in this case. You heard how Evan and his buddies are. If they knew I’d paid for those lights, they’d insinuate all kinds of untrue motivations.” He shrugged. “I don’t want or need the notoriety right now. I just want Sunshine to prosper and do well, to support the people who live here. I want to keep the community alive.”

  “But—why?” she asked, unable to believe in his altruism.

  “I grew up around here, Joy. I’ve seen little communities around Sunshine fail, mostly because their citizens don’t support their own towns and the businesses in them. It’s not specific to here. I’ve seen the same thing all over the world.”

  “But that’s just part of the—” She searched for the right words. “Global trend. Isn’t it?”

  “You mean the trend for rural folks to order online for the sheer novelty of having something delivered without having to leave their easy chairs? Or the trend for them to travel to the cities to buy because they think they get a better deal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sadly, I guess it is,” he agreed with a nod. “Though I believe it’s based on a fallacy. Here’s the issue. Taking your commerce away from the place you live is the beginning of a breakdown for smaller towns. If we stop endorsing each other, if we stop buying from our friends and neighbors, if we won’t make the effort to support where we live, how can towns like Sunshine, our homes, survive?”

  “I guess that’s the way of the future,” she said, hating the sound of it.

  “Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be like that, Joy.” Sam leaned forward in his eagerness. “Look at the people who have flocked to Sunshine. We’re not that different from any other town. But we offered something different with Experience Christmas, something unique, something folks want. At its very basic sense, we offered community.”

  “Why does it matter so much to you, Sam?” Joy couldn’t understand his underlying passion. What motivated Sam to go above and beyond when, even after he’d proven himself, some of the people in Sunshine still berated him?

  “For me it started years ago when we Calhoun boys came to Sunshine. We were orphaned, injured, with our lives in fragments. Folks in this town went out of their way to make us feel that we fit in, that we were an important part of their world.” He smiled. “It didn’t matter that Ben and Bonnie adopted us. To Sunshiners we were local kids, one of the gang, and they offered us the same as their own kids. They supported us, believed in us and cheered us on. They needed us. And we needed them.”

  “But that was then.” Joy so wished she’d known Sam when he was a kid. “Things are different now.”

  “Not for me.” Sam shrugged. “When I left Sunshine, I decided that no matter where I went, I’d find a way to invest myself, my money and whatever time I could give to make sure other kids who lived in Sunshine had a chance to experience the same values, the same support, the same feeling of being needed that my brothers and I had.” He smiled at her, that amazing, flashing, fascinating smile.

  “It’s a nice thought but...” She let her words fade away.

  “It’s more than that. It’s important. We all need connections. It really does take a village to raise a child, Joy. The village provides roots, a background, a history. I have a past that has a place in my life and affects my future, all because I lived in Sunshine.” He peered straight at her, his voice soft, compelling. “I’ve traveled around the world, but I never really had a home base, except for Sunshine. This is my home. I want it to succeed and prosper.”

  “Okay, but what about Evan?”

  “Evan and his cronies are a few bruised apples in a town of more than three thousand. Their kind are everywhere, soured on life and needing a scapegoat. They’re hurting and so they lash out.” He smiled. “They’ll get over it eventually. Folks in Sunshine won’t let them hang on to their sour grapes. But for now they’re disconnected. Our job as their friends and neighbors is to find a way to reconnect them with Sunshine and make them part of it.”

  “I doubt they want to be part of anything good,” she muttered with a frown. “But why not just tell them the truth about what you did?” She didn’t get it. “Why not be honest?”

  “Do you think Evan cares about honesty?” Sam demanded. “He’d say I was trying to buy their good opinion, to buy back my honesty or something worse.” He shook his head emphatically. “I don’t want the focus on me. I want the focus to be on Experience Christmas, on how Sunshine, its attitude and its community, can help folks recapture the goodwill toward men that is so hard to come by in this world.”

  “So those costumes the high school kids needed for their play...” Joy remembered how concerned the kids were about that, and how the next day, the problem had been inexplicably solved. “Did you—”

  “When the rental company found out about Experience Christmas, they decided to up the price the kids had negotiated.” Sam shrugged. “That wasn’t right, so I got a friend of mine to call them and say they were investigating how the company was taking advantage of a town’s bad circumstances.”

  “Adina,” she guessed. “The one who’s covering the Rose Bowl Parade.”

  “No comment.” Sam inclined his head. “What else do you need to know, Joy? Ask me.”

  This was her opportunity. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she needed to know that everything about Sam wasn’t a lie.

  “That story,” she said slowly. “The report that was false.” When Sam hesitated, she reminded him, “You said you’d tell me the truth, but you won’t tell me the truth about that?”

  “I can tell you part of it,” he said very quietly. “But I can’t tell you everything because that story is still in play.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked, confused.

  “It means I’ll trust you with part of it if you’ll believe me when I say that I’m praying everything will be resolved soon. Hopefully by Christmas.” He sighed at her dubious expression. “I’m not playing games, Joy. I am deadly serious about this.”

  “Tell me what you can.” She decided to withhold her judgment until she’d heard his explanation.

  “I’ll have to go back a bit. Excuse me if I stumble or stutter. It’s not pretty.” Sam heaved a sigh, leaned against the filing cabinet, and began speaking, his voice quiet, even a bit hoarse. “I told you I entered a country illegally to follow up on a report I’d received about its president.”

  “And you were captured, imprisoned and pr
obably tortured,” she said and nodded. “Now you have PTSD. Go on.”

  “Actually, it’s not quite that simple. My captors demanded to know the name of my source. That’s where the torture came in. I was pretty sure that if they got a name, they’d kill my source.” His voice choked off and then resumed in a bleaker tone. “That’s why I couldn’t give in to them no matter what they did to me. At all costs I had to protect my source. That irritated them a great deal.”

  “I can imagine,” she said grimly.

  “So a few days later my captors threw me in a hole in the desert and left me there. Nobody knew where I was, Joy. Nobody knew that I’d been captured, that I couldn’t leave. Not my boss, not my embassy and not my friends. Not even my source. I was all alone, in pain and certain I’d never again be free.”

  The haunting emptiness of his whispered confession expressed Sam’s state of mind better than any other words he could have used.

  “You don’t have to tell me any more. Don’t go through it all again,” Joy whispered.

  “I need you to understand.” Sam inhaled. Several seconds passed before he spoke again. “I don’t know how many days passed before they returned. I had no water, no food and the heat was grueling. I was delirious part of the time, unconscious and daydreaming.” His face had drained of all color. His hands fisted at his sides as he closed his eyes on the memories.

  “Sam, stop.”

  “I have never felt so alone,” he said raggedly. “I felt God had abandoned me. That everyone had. I can’t explain the void that was my soul.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Joy wanted to tell him to let it go, but then she realized he might need to speak of it, to finally cleanse the horror that he’d obviously kept bottled inside.

  “They must have pulled me out of the hole, because when I came to, I was in some kind of underground room, tied to a chair. When I again refused to talk, they waterboarded me.” Agony filled every word. “They shot off guns near my head, which I guess is why loud sounds send me back there.”

  “Sam—”

  “Don’t stop me, Joy.” He stared at her as the words poured out of him. “They beat me over and over with fists, hands, sticks. I don’t even remember all the ways. They used isolation tactics, left the lights on twenty-four hours, played hard rock at loud volume, kept repeating that nobody cared about me, that I was a dead man. Stuff like that. Half the time I was out of it. The only way I knew I hadn’t given in to them was because they kept at it. Day after day. For three weeks.”

  “Until?” she whispered, horrified and feeling ill.

  “Until the president himself appeared. He called me a hundred names, spit on me and ordered another beating. But they never touched my face when they beat me.”

  “Oh. That’s strange, isn’t it?” she mused.

  “I wondered why, too, until he suddenly offered me a deal. I could go free if I reported one last story exactly as they had written it. Any attempt to change the wording or give an impression that it wasn’t accurate would result in my death.” Sam laughed but it was a miserable cackle. “You know, I actually welcomed that thought, that I could just be done with it. Except I knew I wasn’t right with God.”

  Sam shuddered. His hands shook and his eyes roved back and forth, as if he was trying to erase the memories.

  “So you read the story they’d written verbatim. That’s the one that the world heard, the untrue one, the one that discredited you.”

  “Yes.” Sam smiled but there was no joy in the curve of his lips. “They waited just long enough for that story to go global, then released information to prove the story was untrue so that anything I reported after wouldn’t be believed. The information I’d collected was useless.”

  “Oh, Sam,” she whispered. “All your work and suffering...”

  “For nothing.” He nodded sadly. “Later, when my vilification was in full swing and I was partially healed, they released me. I had no defense. There was nothing I could do.”

  “You could have told the world,” Joy sputtered. “You didn’t bother to offer any explanation at all!”

  “No.” He stared at her impassively. Silence yawned. It was as if he was trying to tell her something without words. But what?

  “Because you couldn’t,” she whispered, suddenly seeing the truth. Sam always had a reason for his actions. She sorted it out in her mind. “Because there was something—no, someone else in the mix. Because to say anything would be to risk their life?”

  He neither confirmed nor denied it.

  “Sam?” Joy was so confused, she couldn’t make head or tails of her thoughts. Sam hadn’t told her the truth. Sam hadn’t told the world the truth. Because...

  “In my job—” His voice trembled. He paused, inhaled and began again. “Ever since I’ve been able to choose my own subjects to cover, I’ve tried to report on people, places and events in ways that would better the world, wake up its citizens, help us be more responsive to others’ plights.” He gulped. “But despite my motives, I’ve ended up hurting people.”

  “Meaning?” Joy needed all the information she could get. Maybe that would help clear up her misperceptions about this man and what he’d done.

  “I did a story on a doctor in Syria once, about how he found needed supplies so he could treat the wounded.” Sam closed his eyes. “Somehow someone figured out how he got those supplies and cut them off. Then they killed that doctor. He’d be alive and so would more of his patients if I hadn’t told his story.”

  “But that’s not your fault!” she exclaimed.

  “There was this family in Brazil with a very bright daughter. A math genius, far above her age and grade level. I featured her in a story.” His voice had gone dull now, as if he were reciting tedious facts. “A month after the story aired, the parents lost custody. The girl was taken away from them.”

  “Why?”

  “Recruited to work on some government project? Top secret maybe? I could never find out for sure. I only know I broke up that family, Joy.” Regret laced his words. “And then there was Celia. She also died because of me.”

  “No,” Joy interrupted, “she died because someone kidnapped her and didn’t provide her inhaler.”

  “But they kidnapped her because I was too focused on the story, too focused on the crook, on making him pay. And on getting my peers’ approval for my work. But Celia’s the one who paid—with her life.”

  “I’m sorry.” There was nothing else she could say.

  “I loved Celia, Joy.” Sam’s words were quiet, controlled. “Her death forced me into awareness of how many problems my thoughtless actions and total dedication to my job could cause. I never again wanted anyone to be hurt because of what I said. Her death left a huge hole in me. I was afraid to love again, in case I got hurt again. I’ve held on to that fear for a long time.”

  Sam lifted his head to look directly at her. Joy shifted under the intensity of his regard, afraid to hear what he’d say next and yet needing a very strong reason to forget his betrayal, to rebuild her shattered trust in him.

  “I never let myself even consider love again,” he murmured. “Until you came along with your alligator hat and three special kids.”

  She had to smile at the memory.

  “When you talked about learning trust, I began to realize that trust in God was what I lacked. My faith failed me in that hole because I lost sight of God. I didn’t trust He would get me out or help me endure if I had to. In that place, I finally realized just how weak I was without God.”

  “Oh, Sam.” Her heart broke for this generous man and what he’d suffered.

  “I didn’t know how to change until I came home and my dad and I started studying the Bible. Not until you taught me how to trust, Joy.” A wry smile flickered across Sam’s lips. “That’s one reason I love you so much.”

  “But Sam.” Joy stopped.


  How could she explain that despite all he’d said, she couldn’t see a way to break free of this horrible feeling of betrayal? She surely didn’t feel like she could trust Sam. Or God, for that matter.

  She’d trusted Him to take care of her. Why hadn’t He spared her this?

  “Do you know why I called my company Possibilities?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Because I wanted to use it to help people see what could be, instead of what is.” Sam reached out and tucked a curl behind her ear. “You and your bakery are the best possible demonstration of possibilities. You saw what could be and you charged in to make it happen. Same with the town festival.” He smiled. “That’s another reason I fell in love with you, Joy.”

  “But all this time, all the secrets? All the half-truths,” she whispered. “You involved my kids. Josh might have recognized my parents’ bakery—”

  “He did.” Sam nodded. “I asked him not to rat me out.”

  “That’s why he was angry at you.” She shook her head, ignoring that, for now. “But still, you didn’t trust me. Without trust, there isn’t love.”

  “I know that now. And I’m truly sorry, Joy. I only ever wanted the best for you. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  She couldn’t say anything.

  “Will you forgive me?” Sam asked in a hushed tone. “Will you give me a second chance?”

  “I don’t know if I can.” She yearned for his embrace, his love, and yet was afraid she’d make another mistake, one she’d regret for the rest of her life. “I need time to sort it all out.”

  “Take all the time you need, my darling. I’ll still be here, waiting.” He brushed his fingertip against her lips and peered into her eyes. “But be certain of one thing, Joy. No matter what it seems like, how I acted or what people say, I do love you. More than I ever imagined possible. I’m trusting God to bring you back to me.”