CHAPTER 1

      Cassia, I’m collecting again. Want to chip in five bucks? If so, leave it in the envelope in my desk. Hope it’s a lucky weekend. See you Monday! Stella

      Who is having a baby this time?

      Sometimes I wonder why I work for a living. Is it to support myself or the office kitty every time someone in customer service or any other department has a baby…or a wedding…a funeral…a promotion…or a zit?

      We are the most fertile, engage-able, promote-able and magnanimous division of Parker Bennett Manufacturing and buy more gifts and flowers than the rest of shipping and receiving, human resources and accounting offices put together.

      It doesn’t hurt that Stella Olson prefers shopping online as an office-related activity to doing her actual work as receptionist and secretary. Of course, I enjoy being part of a group so generous and thoughtful. I like giving things away. Proverbs 11:24 and all.

      Some people give much, but get back even more. But others don’t give what they should and they end up poor.

      My Sunday-school teacher—who also happened to be my mother—made a big deal out of that. She talked a lot about how giving freely could lead to good things and being stingy and hoarding things wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Maybe she was just trying to get my sister and me to share toys, but the lesson went far deeper in me.

      At first I dumped all my pennies into the collection plate as insurance that nothing terrible would happen to me, but as I got older I realized that I hadn’t purchased any heavenly health insurance after all.

      I’m a P.K., a preacher’s kid—or if I want to get fancy, a T.O., a theologian’s offspring. Money never meant much to us. We always had good food to eat, a nice parsonage to live in and anything else we seemed to need. Now Dad is happy as a clam serving a three-point parish in Wyoming, sometimes eating three potluck dinners in a single day and turning a deaf ear to my mother’s lectures on the dangers of high blood pressure. He’s been known to have coffee and homemade cookies as many as seven times in a row when he’s visiting his parishioners and, because he looks so cuddly with those extra chins, they keep on feeding him. He’s oblivious to all but his flock and his faith and is often difficult to engage in conversations about anything other than baptism, church council, salvation or the Sunday-school board of education. Mom, fortunately, loves being Sunday school superintendent, leading Bible study and directing Christmas pageants. They’re a little distant at times, but that’s probably natural. They spent a lot of time in the mission field while I was growing up, and when they were gone, my sister and I lived with our grandparents.

      I blame my grandfather, Benjamin Carr, for my proclivity to donate money to every good cause. I can still envision him—his perfectly groomed white hair, fastidiously trimmed mustache and penetrating gray eyes that pierced right to my soul. I can also hear his rumbling, sonorous voice quoting Luke 6:38. “Whatever measure you use in giving—large or small—it will be used to measure what is given back to you.” He led by example—to my grandmother’s dismay when she needed grocery money and found her cookie jar empty. But as she reminded us time and time again, God always provides.

      I’ve missed my grandfather every day since he passed 10 weeks ago. Grandma assures me that with time, the pain will lessen. I’m still waiting.

      Gramps was a big fan of the Bible first, and of Winston Churchill second. Spiritual, brilliant and with a keen interest in the history of Great Britain, Gramps spent the last fifty years of his life in Simms, South Dakota, a speck-in-the-road town that hadn’t substantially changed since the day he and his nineteen-year-old bride arrived, fresh faced and eager, to build a new church.

      Gramps believed that Christians are givers—of time, talents, compassion and money. When anyone remarked on his proclivity for keeping so little for himself that he could barely make ends meet, he responded with a quote from Winston Churchill. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Even those doubting Thomases who took issue with the Bible were usually willing to respect old Winston.

      I sighed and turned to stare at Stella’s desk.

      I’m new to this office and to Minneapolis, Minnesota. I need all the friends I can get. Besides, I take pleasure in the celebrations as much as anyone. I love a good party.

      I dug deep to find five one-dollar bills in the bottom of my worn faux leather purse and opened the desk drawer. I need a new purse, but right now I don’t have anything to put into it—or to pay for it with, either. What’s more, Grandpa Ben praised frugality so much that I actually get more joy out of not spending money. Weird, I know—a twenty-eight-year-old woman who doesn’t like to shop.

      I peered inside the desk drawer. She’s meticulous, that Stella—I have to give her that. Every nail-polish bottle is arranged in order, descending from the dark rum-brown to the pale pink haze. Her pens, one of every color except black, which she says is depressing, are also tidily organized. She has lipstick, breath spray, mascara, blush and foundation stored where everyone else keeps their sticky pads and paper clips.

      I suppose that’s what happens when you are a beautiful Scandinavian with hair the color of lemon juice, flawless porcelain skin, blue-violet eyes that change from the color of a peaceful sea to the angry violet of a nasty bruise in a nanosecond. Stella wants to be a model or an actress, but until she hits the big time she also wants to make a living—hence her receptionist position at PB Manufacturing. She’s nearly six feet tall and has a presence that terrifies most men. She says this is a great filter—only the most fearless dare approach her.

      Stella also has a private-investigator friend who is always giving her advice—or making her more mistrustful, depending how one looks at it. A woman like Stella, who can have any man she wants, needs a screening system of some sort, I suppose. She’s not paranoid like another of our coworkers, but her philosophy is that all men are guilty until proven innocent.

      There, right up front where no one could miss it, was her collection envelope with “Fun Money” printed on the flap. More fun when you’re on the receiving end of it, I imagine. I stared into my now-empty purse.

      “Sorry, Winslow, you’ll have to wait one more week for your pedicure.” I glanced at the framed photo on my desk of my enormous, taffy-brown golden retriever/Old English sheepdog as I spent the money I’d been saving for his trip to the grooming parlor. I named him after Winslow Homer, the painter who first used watercolors to paint significant art. Although Homer primarily painted the sea, one canvas, The Rustics, always reminds me of Simms, the place I still call home. Despite his pink, lolling tongue and patient, benevolent expression, Winslow won’t be happy about waiting. He’s almost as vain as Stella, and loves coming home smelling like doggy perfume and having a new kerchief around his massive neck. My ninety-day probation period can’t be over soon enough for me. That’s when I get a raise that will bring me out of poverty level.

      Ever since I moved to the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, I’ve been reeling from sticker shock. In Simms I could buy a great little house with a garden and double-car garage for a third of what I’m paying here for a diminutive, overcrowded second-floor apartment in a sixty-year-old building with as many creaks and groans as the retired ranchers who populate Fannie’s Coffee Shop on Saturday mornings.

      As I slipped my five dollars into the envelope and closed the drawer, the phone rang. For me, terminally curious, ignoring it is never an option.

      “Parker Bennett Manufacturing. This is Cassia. May I help you?”

      “Can you talk?” The voice on the other end