Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

      —James 1:17

      To the Unity Sunday School class—

       for all their good and perfect gifts.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Questions for Discussion

      Prologue

      The man and the two little boys stared down at the disheveled woman asleep on the big Ultrasuede couch in their living room.

      “Is she a princess, Daddy?” six-year-old Tyler asked, his dark eyes going wide. “My friend Emily is always talking about princesses. She’s a girl, though.” He shrugged. “I don’t know much about that kind of stuff.”

      “She’s not a princess, silly,” his older brother, Sam, answered with ten-year-old authority. “And she shouldn’t be here. Isn’t it illegal to enter someone’s house when they’re not at home, Dad? Besides, she’s ruining our couch with her wet clothes.”

      Rory, still in shock from finding the woman there in the first place, stopped staring and went into action. “It’s okay, Sam. She looks hurt.” He gently nudged at the woman’s arm. “Ma’am, excuse me? Wake up, okay?” When the woman didn’t move, he panicked. “Lady, can you hear me?”

      “She’s asleep,” Tyler pointed out. “Maybe she needs a blanket.”

      Rory pushed away the blanket his son offered. “Let’s make sure she’s all right first.” He bent and carefully rolled the woman over from her stomach to her back, then felt for a pulse along her neck. She had a pulse. That much he knew. He could feel it through the softness of her skin. And she was wearing an intricate gold-chained square locket that fell across her V-necked sweater with each movement of her breath.

      “Is she dead?” Sam asked, his curiosity with all things crime-related making Rory wince. The kid had been that way since his mother had been killed three years earlier in a convenience-store robbery.

      “No, son. She’s breathing. But something is definitely wrong.”

      Rory carefully examined the woman for broken bones or any other signs of injury, then turned her face around so he could inspect it. And that’s when he saw the blood matted in her dark blond hair just above her left temple.

      “She don’t look so great,” Tyler remarked.

      “No, she doesn’t,” Rory replied, grabbing his cell out of his pocket. He immediately called 911 and explained the situation. “We found a woman in our house, unconscious and bleeding from a head wound. She needs medical attention.”

      After giving his address to the dispatcher, Rory hung up and turned to his two quiet, curious sons.

      “Now you can hand me the blanket, Tyler.”

      His son shoved the plaid comforter toward him, the boy’s big eyes wide with wonder—and a keen interest. “Daddy, if she lives, can we keep her?”

      Chapter One

      Two hours earlier

      Icy rain pounded the windshield then fell away like tiny diamonds from a broken necklace.

      “It never sleets in South Louisiana!”

      Goldie Rios hit her hand on the steering wheel of her compact vehicle, wondering how a perfectly good Saturday in early December had gone from a day of Christmas shopping and a late dinner to driving down this dark, deserted road all by herself.

      Nervous and tired, she grabbed the locket she always wore, clutching it briefly with one hand before taking the wheel of the car back with a tight grip. Oh, yes. She remembered with belated bitterness how her day had gone from bad to worse. She’d just dumped another loser of a boyfriend, and right in the middle of a swanky uptown restaurant at the mall near Baton Rouge. The whole place had gone silent, the only sound Goldie’s seething response to Loser Number Five’s whining excuses for being seen with another woman one hour before he’d met Goldie for dinner.

      The woman was not his sister, his mother, his aunt or his niece. And Goldie was pretty sure she wasn’t his grandmother, either, since the cute blonde clung to him in a way that bespoke intimacy rather than family bonds.

      She should have listened to her friend Carla—before Carla called her from the other end of the mall and told her to casually walk by the pet store. She’d warned Goldie that this one was too smooth, too confident and too good-looking, but Goldie wasn’t good at listening to other people’s advice. Carla was right. He was in the pet store, buying a cuddly Chihuahua while he cuddled the cute blonde.

      Busted.

      Goldie watched, horrified and hurt, from behind the Gingerbread House at Santa Claus Lane, while the man she’d been dating for six months kissed another woman. And bought her a dog. He’d never once offered to buy Goldie a dog. In fact, he’d told her he was highly allergic to animals. So after waiting for him to meet her for dinner, Goldie smiled, chatted with him, ordered spaghetti and meatballs and then “accidentally” dumped half her meal onto his lap before telling him that they were finished. It was a standard metaphoric mode of dumping a boyfriend, but now she understood why a lot of women took this route. It made a statement to the world and it made her feel good.

      Or at least