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loaf of banana nut bread over here that will make you slap your mama and some ice-cold milk to go along with it.”
    “What kind of nuts did you put in it?”
    “Black walnut, child. Ain’t no other kind of nut for banana nut bread. Should I cut you a slice?”
    “I’m on my way.”
     
    Obadiah leaned his head back, thankful for the cool leather of the navy blue sofa in the library portion of his study. This small room was his sanctuary, filled with books, about a dozen different Bibles, study guides, concordances, tapes, and DVDs—everything a man might need to prepare to preach. But this room also contained other things, things that had nothing to do with Obadiah’s fiery sermons, things that nobody, not even Mama Max, knew anything about.
    Obadiah reached up and wiped the sweat from his face, closed his eyes as his breathing returned to normal. Once his heartbeat slowed and the shaking stopped, Obadiah got up, put everything back in its secret place, scanned the room to make sure all was in order, and went to break bread, banana bread to be exact, with his wife.

7
God’s Princess
    Princess Brook stared long and hard at her grandmother’s number. “Grandmama Max will understand,” she whispered, trying yet again to convince herself to make the call. She picked up the receiver and had punched in nine of the ten numbers needed to complete the call before she hung up the phone and placed her head in her hands. “Father, Mother, God,” she prayed, “please give me the strength to do Your will.”
    God’s will. This was whose will she’d been trying to live by for the past two and a half years, ever since she’d closed the door on her own desires and declared herself to be “God’s Princess.” Ever since leaving college in shame and after a summer surrounded by her father’s sermons and her mother’s love, returning in victory. Princess walked to the minifridge in her cluttered UCLA dorm room, grabbed a soda, popped the top, and remembered.
    The future had looked bright that sunny day in August three and a half years ago, when her mother and father had driven her to Kansas City’s international airport for her LA-bound flight. She was leaving home for the first time, shaking with excitement at the prospects of her first year as a freshman at UCLA and at the blank canvas called “adult life” that stretched before her. Those first days of college had been all that she’d dreamed and more. And once she hooked up with basketball star, campus heartthrob, and almost-a-cousin-but-not-quite Kelvin Petersen, Princess’s life had never been the same.
    The ringing phone jolted Princess out of her reverie. She looked at the caller ID and smiled. “No, I haven’t called,” she answered.
    “I knew it!” Joni screamed. Joni was Princess’s best friend, former roommate, and former favorite party partner. When Princess decided to turn her life around and live a Christ-like lifestyle, she figured her days with “ole Joni girl” were numbered. But Joni had surprised her. Joni had not given Princess a hard time for “finding Jesus,” and after seeing the change in her former roommate, Joni had allowed Princess to lead her to Christ some months later. The shocks continued when, during their junior year, Joni confided that she had led someone else to salvation, her former weed-smoking, pill-popping boyfriend, Brandon. Joni and Brandon were now married, with plans to start a family after Joni graduated college. Brandon, who came from old money and had bypassed higher education, was already making a name for himself in the world of finance.
    “I’m going to call her,” Princess whined. “I just know that once I tell her—”
    “Yeah, yeah, the entire world will know. Or, more specifically, Tai and King Brook will find out that at one time you were a very, very bad girl!”
    “Quit playing,” Princess admonished, but the reprimand was halfhearted. At one time, she had been a bad girl. And outside of Kelvin;