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saying? Jesus seemed to say a lot differently in the Sermon on the Mount.”
    “No, I’m not saying that. I just—” He shook his head. “Look, never mind. Forget I said anything.”
    They sat in silence, stewing and mulling. Rachel stared at the darkened sky, eyes pulled to the blinking lights of an airplane far in the distance. The sight triggered the conversation she’d had with Daphne. Escaping for a weekend looked a lot better than it had at lunch.
    “I’m going to go home.” She stood and folded her arms across her chest against the cool breeze that began to blow. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
    Patrick reached out and caught her elbow. “Hey. I’m really sorry, Rachel. I want to help make you feel better—just tell me what I can do.”
    She shrugged. “I guess there isn’t really anything. I’m sorry if I made you feel bad for not knowing what to do, when even I don’t know what I need. This is new territory for me. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
    Patrick pulled her into a hug, his chin resting on the crown of her head. She sank into him. “You still are blessed, Rach. I guess that’s what I was trying, poorly, to say earlier. God still has His hand on your life.”
    “Yeah—I guess.” She had offered similar consolations to others over the years, but she had never needed them for herself. She winced at how hollow the words felt.
    She drove home with the radio off. The silence gave her space to think, though her mind was stuck on one word: Why? Patrick was right, of course—everyone was flawed. No one’s life was perfect or free from pain. But when you’ve lived twenty-six years tragedy-free, you can’t help but start to think maybe you’ve done something right, and that God’s smile shines a little brighter when he looks at you.
    So what had she done to make him frown?

Chapter 4
     
    Rachel awoke Wednesday morning tangled in a stifling quilt of exhaustion and sorrow. Sleep had eluded her for most of the night, though by God’s grace she was closing the café instead of opening it, so she was able to hide beneath the sheets for a while.
    But soon enough she needed coffee. So when she finally dragged herself from bed, she headed for the kitchen and opened the pantry door. After a short deliberation she pulled the canister of Guatemalan Santiago Atitlan, her go-to for emergencies, from the back of the top shelf and dumped two tablespoons of the grounds into her French press. In the state she was in, she needed something with some hefty body and snap to get her in shape for work.
    She took a deep breath, inhaling the rich aroma. With the scent clearing her head as it filled the small galley kitchen, she returned the canister to the pantry and added the boiling water to the press pot. Then she carried a bowl of cereal to the table to wait for the grounds to steep.
    Her thoughts swirled like steam as she munched her Special K. She knew she should be praying, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t really want to talk to God. Of the three people she typically went to in a crisis, two of them were the crisis, and the other had proven himself less than competent at helping her cope. She couldn’t really blame him, she realized—he’d had no practice at comforting her since they’d been together because nothing this bad ever happened in her life. Certainly he’d get better with it over time—not that she hoped he’d have more opportunities to work on his skills.
    She didn’t want to talk to her high school girls about it all—she was there to minister to them, not the other way around, and she didn’t feel comfortable being so vulnerable with them. All her other friends were Christians and would come at her with the same clichés Patrick had used and that she had always relied on, but she didn’t want to hear them. She didn’t want to forgive. She didn’t want to trust it would all work out for good for those who love the Lord. She did love God and had