A pause. Then, carefully: “Do you?”
The honest answer rose up with humiliating clarity.
I wasn’t sure.
I trusted my instincts in combat zones. Trusted my ability to read a room, a source, a threat. Trusted the part of me that knew when a story needed shouting from rooftops and when it needed one more corroborating call.
I had never before been in a situation where that instinct ran headlong into the part of me that wanted to protect one particular person from harm.
“I’m working on it,” I said.
“That’s not reassuring,” he said. “Look, Amelia. I’m not your father. I’m not here to tell you not to sleep with sources or to keep your heart out of your work. God knows I’ve done both badly at some point. But I am here to remind you that you don’t get to turn your reporter brain off because you like the way a man looks at you.”
“I know that,” I said, a flash of irritation cutting through the anxiety.
“Do you?” he pressed. “Because from where I’m sitting, it sounds like you’re telling me the story is ‘complicated’ while your reputation hangs in the balance.”
Guilt flared, bright and immediate.
“This is about something bigger,” I said. “If I run in half-cocked, I could make things worse. I need to understand the landscape before I drop a match on it.”
Silence.
For a second, I thought the call had dropped. Then his voice came back, quieter.
“You’ve never talked like this before,” he said. “Every time I’ve thrown you into a mess, you’ve wanted to publish yesterday. Even when it cost us. Especially when it cost you.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
“I hired you,” he said, “because you were the kid who wrote angry letters to the editor about civics textbooks glossing over war crimes. Because when the dean told you to stop causing trouble, you printed his email on flyers and papered the student union. You’ve always believed that sunlight was worth the burn. Are you telling me you suddenly don’t?”
I stared at the house, sunlight glinting off the windows. Inside, there were rooms full of secrets. Some of them corrosive. Some of them the kind that, if exposed, would burn people I loved to ash.
“I’m saying,” I answered slowly, “that sometimes you have to choose where to point the light. That maybe not every truth belongs in a lede. Not right away. Not if it gets people killed.”
The line went very quiet.
“When did you start sounding like my sources in State?” he asked, not unkindly. “Quoting ‘people might die’ at me to shut down coverage?”
Rage flickered—automatic and familiar.
“I’m not trying to shut anything down,” I said. “I’m telling you that I owe it to the people on the ground to understand who all the players are before I swing. And that includes you. And it includes him.”
“Him,” he repeated softly. “Is he worth it?”
The question landed like a punch.
Worth what? My career? My reputation? The self I’d spent a lifetime building on a foundation of unflinching honesty?
All my childhood lessons rose up—my parents arguing while insisting I listen, my mother admitting when she was wrong and apologizing to me like we were equals, my father correcting himself at the dinner table when he’d misremembered some historical fact and turning his mistake into a teachable moment.
We tell the truth, even when it hurts.
It was the closest thing to religion I’d ever had.
Was I really about to betray that for a man?
No.
