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His paternal grandfather is a Lutheran minister in Copenhagen. Mikkel has three younger sisters, and they all speak Danish and can write it a little too. He says the family prays in Danish in the evening and in English in the morning.
    Mikkel asked Sophia and me if we spoke a foreign language. Neither of us do. He offered to teach us a little Danish if we were interested. We both said yes, we would like to learn. But I am afraid I will be a great disappointment to him. I do not have a good head for that sort of thing.
    Esther
    Tuesday, October 6, 1936
    Dear Diary,
    I am so pleased. Mikkel Pastor Christiansen asked me if I would teach the children’s Sunday school class because Mrs. Filbert has taken ill. I said I did not know if I could do it. I am not a teacher. But he said he would help me prepare the classwork and would answer any questions I had. He believes I can do it, which makes me happy.
    Esther

FIVE
    Mornings were Sophia’s favorite time of day. That hadn’t always been so. In her younger years, when resentment had twisted her heart, she had preferred to sleep late. But no more. Now she was eager to welcome each day the Lord gave her.
    In the summer she often went to her garden where she could sit on the wrought-iron park bench beneath a tall globe willow Bradley had planted their first summer in this house. There, under those wide-spreading branches, she would watch the sun rise.
    Early on this Saturday morning in June, lacy clouds in the east were tinged with lavender, while the morning star winked in a sky trapped between pewter and blue.
    As was so often the case, praise welled up in her chest, and she had to let it burst forth in song. It mattered not that her voice in this, her eighty-second year, was only a frail reminder of what it once had been. She merely assumed that was why God had seen fit to have the psalmist write about making a joyful noise. The good Lord didn’t want anyone to keep silent because of the quality of his or her voice.
    Her song finished, she leaned against the support at her back and closed her eyes. “It’s a beautiful day, Lord. Thank You for it.
    All good things are from above, and You pour them out upon us, the just and the unjust.”
    She hugged her large-print Bible to her chest.
    “I lift Dusty before You, Lord. He’s still hanging on to those rags of guilt, isn’t he? He’s not letting go. I don’t know how to help him, except to love him and to pray. So that’s what I’m doing. Be his guide and let him know Your peace, Father.”
    Leaves rustled over her head, and the gentle morning breeze kissed Sophia’s cheek.
    “Bless our boys, Hal and Noah and Ted and Billy.” She pictured each one of them as she spoke their names. She knew God saw them too. Saw them —saw their needs—and knew the answers for their lives. “Only Billy has come to know You, Jesus, as Savior. Speak to the hearts of the other boys. And help us to plant the seeds of truth. Let them see You in me and in Dusty and in Grant.”
    The song of a meadowlark could be heard in the distance.
    “And Karen … O God, I know You’ve brought her here because of Your great love for her. Reveal that love, Lord. And let her know my love too. Help me to undo the wrongs I’ve committed toward her because of the wrongs I did her mother.”
    She released a deep sigh.
    “Poor Maggie. My poor, poor Maggie.”
    Regrets.
    She had so many regrets.

    Sophia stood beside the bed, staring down at the little girl. The pale lamplight revealed tear tracks on the child’s cheeks, and even in sleep she clutched the rag doll to her chest as though her life depended upon it.
    Margaret Rose Christiansen. Esther’s daughter.
    Mikkel’s daughter.
    Esther called her Rose, the letter from Hannah Abrams had said.
    “I’ll call you Maggie,” Sophia whispered.
    Maggie looked like her father. She had his pale gold hair, baby fine and curly. She had his eyes, too. Maggie’s father had been able to silence a crowd with a