Shunning Sarah by Julie Kramer

Author:Julie Kramer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emily Bestler Books / Atria Books

CHAPTER 43

A few hours later, another phone call woke me. This time it was my mom, calling to say that a local billboard had been defaced. “Everyone around here’s talking about it, Riley.”

Trying to be nice, I clarified that unless the vandals had scrawled neo-Nazi propaganda over a red, white, and blue billboard supporting our troops, minor vandalism just wasn’t major-market news.

Bryce would go ballistic if I even pitched such a story. He would probably write up a note for my personnel file, using this as an example of my poor news judgment.

“Nobody wrote anything on the billboard,” Mom said. “They just painted over it.”

“What do you mean?”

She explained that a large billboard had gone up outside Harmony a couple days earlier with the Sarah sketch, a headline reading “Call Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office with information about Sarah Yoder’s murder,” and the phone number.

“And someone painted over it?” I asked. “Why?”

“Talk is the Amish did it because they didn’t want her face up there for everyone to see,” she said.

“They don’t like pictures,” I heard my dad yell in the background, trying to be helpful. “So they gave it a good whitewashing.”

The theory made sense. Especially after meeting the rest of Sarah’s family.

If I could pick one Yoder to spend some alone time with, I’d go for Sarah’s younger sister. Out of the mouths of babes. Hannah seemed curious about her sister’s fate, perhaps not old enough to have bought into the “God’s Will” philosophy of her mother. She might even have seen or heard something that made her uneasy, that she needed to share with someone.

But such an encounter seemed unlikely. It’s not like I could dial a number and hope a little girl answered the phone. These were Amish.

Yet our paths had crossed twice. Perhaps the third time could be the charm.

• • •

The news staff was settling down for the morning huddle. Word on the Minneapolis blaze was that a kitchen grease fire destroyed two popular dining spots as well as a shopping complex.

“The fact that restaurants burned down is more interesting than residential homes,” Bryce said. “Viewers only care if it’s their house. Or maybe their neighbor’s. But thousands of people probably dined at those places. Everybody cares about food.”

He got no arguments from any of us on that theory.

“We need to be airing more food stories,” he continued. “Within the next week I want everyone here to suggest a story about food. Some we’ll air immediately, some we’ll hold till next month’s sweeps.”

“Food news or food features?” I asked.

“Just food,” he said. “I’ll know it when I hear it.”

I had no objection to covering the food beat. That’s the kind of research underpaid journalists love. Before I became recognizable, the newspaper food critic used to let me tag along during her reviews.

We were back to discussing further coverage of the restaurant fire when Ozzie yelled over from the assignment desk that he had a live one. “The bear’s been collared!”

Apparently the southern Minnesota bear was being tracked, not just by hunters but by scientists.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.