Part 1

Pocketful of Pearls
by Shelley Bates

Raised in a toxic church, Dinah has been forced to surrender mentally and physically to her sociopathic pastor's every demand for her entire twenty-four years. Though she dreams of escape, this is the only world she's ever known and so she stays. But when Dr. Matthew Nicholas-stranded, penniless, and unwilling to return home-appears on Dinah's doorstep in the dark of night, Dinah glimpses the light of a different day.

Matthew is immediately drawn to Dinah, and is thankful for the opportunity to work on her family's ranch. Watching her struggle with the realization that the faith she was raised with is flawed, he's soon torn between his desire to help her and the fear of getting too involved. Then, suddenly, the unexpected lands on their doorstep: an abandoned baby. Now two lost souls must learn to open up and trust each other for the sake of this child ... and for their own chances at a real future.

Chapter 1

The vagrant came to the back door the night of Morton Traynell's funeral, just as Dinah was trying to organize food for the hundred or so mourners who filled the front rooms of the old farmhouse.

The knock was so soft she would have missed it if the group of women helping her hadn't left the kitchen just then, loaded down with plates of rolls, neatly sliced vegetables, and casserole dishes.

She jerked open the door and stared at the man on the steps. He held a knitted cap in both hands, squeezing it as though it were a washrag. The harsh overhead light gave his skin a yellowish cast under a ragged beard.

A stranger.With a jolt of fear, she stepped back and swung the door nearly closed, its comforting weight between herself and him.

"I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am," he said softly. He had some kind of foreign accent, but Dinah was too frightened to take the time to identify it."I wonder if you'd have a bite to spare a hungry man."

There were enough bites in the front room to feed an army of hungry men, but food given to a stray off the street deprived one of God's chosen, who could use it for God's work.

"This is a bad time." The words came out rushed, almost under her breath. "My father was buried this afternoon, and everyone is here for the supper. I'm sorry."

The gentle hope that had filled his eyes drained out of him as though he'd been punctured. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said."Sorry to trouble you." He bent his head and turned to go. Her loss? Her heart began to pump painfully as she hesitated between fear and pity."Wait."

He had been looking down the road for the lights of the next place, but there was nothing down there except the Hamilton River, swollen, brown, and rushing with spring runoff. At the thought of what the river had come to mean to her, and what it could mean to a sad, hungry man who was obviously at the end of his own resources, Dinah felt a chill of apprehension.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Let me get you a plate." He came back up the steps as cautiously as a deer.A starving one, in whom fear had been brutally displaced by hunger. "I don't want to be any bother."

"This house is full of food. You're no more bother than any of the rest of them."

Leaving him on the steps, Dinah shut the door and snatched two paper plates off the table. She stacked them one on top of the other and loaded the reinforced result with vegetables, hamburger casserole, pasta salad, and bread, taking a bite for herself between every spoonful for him. She filled a plastic bottle with cold water. The man looked dehydrated. Ready to drop. And Alma Woods's casseroles were notoriously salty.

She shouldered the door back open and handed him the plate, fork, and bottle."Don't let anyone see you." "Thanks, ma'am. Bless you."

Dinah restrained herself from telling him that he had nothing to bless himself with, much less anybody else, as he faded into the darkened yard. She supposed she'd find the water bottle out there somewhere in the morning.

She turned back to the kitchen and removed the plastic wrap from a tray of sausages, stuffing two into her mouth as she did so. It wouldn't be so hard if Tamara were here. She should have been allowed to come back to help during the crisis, to handle their mother with her particular knack. But instead, at the age of seventeen, her sister was as one dead. Still struggling to finish high school, she'd been put away for her sins, and Dinah was on her own.

One of the women came back for more food, and took the plate from her."How are you holding up, Dinah?"

Just for a moment, Dinah thought about telling her the truth, but she was in the service of God, separated unto himself, with a veil drawn between herself and even his people, the Elect. She had to remember that. It was the only thing that kept her going on days like today, when fear painted the future in dismal, watery shades of gray and black.

She swallowed the last of the sausage. "Pretty well," she said. "Better than Mom, I think."

The woman's expression teetered between sympathy and disapproval of someone who would admit in public that she wasn't grieving her father's death as much as her mother was. Then again, Mom had chosen Dad.

Copyright © 2005 by Shelley Bates

About the Author

Whether producing search warrants and making undercover phone calls as an admin for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or editing marketing material for the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley, Shelley Bates has found that everyone has a story. Most people have stopped telling her theirs in case she puts them in her books. Shelley holds an M.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University in Pennsylvania. Grounds to Believe, her debut novel, won the 2005 RITA Award for Best Inspirational Novel of the Year from the Romance Writers of America. The sequel, Pocketful of Pearls, was a RITA Award finalist the following year. Between books, Shelley enjoys playing the piano and Celtic harp, making period costumes, and spoiling her flock of rescue chickens rotten.