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out a few of the pieces, each item seemed to release a picture in Alissa’s mind. Each snapshot was of events that had happened when she had worn that outfit. The navy blue mix and match pieces she had taken on her trip to Japan. The white shirt she had worn for seventy-two hours straight when her grandmother went into the hospital.
    Then came a neatly folded dress, short and black. She had chosen that dress for the first time she had met Thomas at Chang’s. Alissa sniffed at the bodice. Did she imagine it, or did it smell like Chinese food? What a wicked night that was. She let the dress crumble into a mound in her lap. Then she allowed her memory access to the places in her mind and heart she had kept locked for two years. Every thought and memory of Thomas Avery tumbled over her with frightening clarity.
    They had met at church. It was a mutual attraction. He was on the worship team, and she spotted him her first week there. She was living in Phoenix at the time. A large travel company had opened a corporate office and had transferred her from the agency where she worked in Atlanta. The first thing she did after moving into her apartment was find a “rockin” church. That was her style at the time—contemporary services, seeker friendly, lots of people, and a platform for her to stand on and sing out her heart.
    She found the perfect church, and tall, gorgeous Thomas Avery was the perfect man. There was only one problem. He was married.
    Alissa was a different person then. She was so on fire for Jesus. And she was slim and energetic with a healthy salary tosupport her clothes habit. Never did she wear the same outfit twice on Sunday mornings. Lots of single men were interested in her. But she was used to that. None of them intrigued her the way Thomas did.
    The first time she shook Thomas’s hand and looked into his strong face was right after she had given her testimony at a Sunday evening service. She had been attending for almost two months and had shared about her past with one of the women in the singles group. The next day the pastor had called her at work and asked if she would be willing to share on Sunday night. He also said he had heard she liked to sing and would she grace them with a song after her testimony. Of course she saw it as a high honor and went out that afternoon to buy an appropriate outfit.
    She practiced in front of the mirror all week. By Sunday night her words were honed.
    “I led a rebellious life as a teenager. My father died when I was sixteen, and my mother was an alcoholic.”
    Alissa went into detail about the party scene she became immersed in and the different guys she was involved with. “I remember one time we were staying at Newport Beach for summer vacation, and my mother was so drunk she threw a vodka bottle at me. I was used to that from her. What I remember the most wasn’t being upset with her but being mad at myself because I’d forgotten to take my birth control pills, and my date was waiting for me. He drove off without me, and I broke down and cried all over this girl I hardly knew. She was so innocent and sweet, and I felt so used up. I wished I could be like her.”
    After more details of the wretchedness of her life, she told how she had been with one guy who died in a bodysurfing accident while he was stoned. She hadn’t really cared.
    “Everything inside me was dead. Then I found out I was pregnant with his child. It seemed impossible that something could be alive inside me when I was so sure I was dead.”
    She told of her difficult decision not to have an abortion, and then how she had given up the baby girl for adoption. There wasn’t a dry eye in the congregation.
    “Then Christy, the girl I cried all over that one night, shared with me how to become a Christian, and I got saved.”
    A roar of applause had filled the church, the pastor had given her a warm handshake, and Thomas had gazed at her from the front row with piercing eyes. Alissa had felt higher