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  Hannah was just glad she was coming. Ever since Thanksgiving, when Meg had joined Mara for her annual ritual of serving meals, Mara had anticipated the Sensible Shoes Club gathering at Crossroads. This was Hannah and Charissa’s first time visiting Mara’s old world, and Hannah knew how excited Mara was to share it with them. Maybe when Meg fully recovered, they could schedule another opportunity to serve together.

  “Sorry I’m late!” Charissa said when she eventually entered the dining room. “Got a phone call from the realtor—everything’s fine—and then John had to get the snow off the car. We’ll be so glad when we’ve got our own garage. Five more weeks.”

  “Glad you made it!” Mara set a plastic salad bowl down on the long rectangular table and pointed toward the coat rack in the far corner of the room. “Coats go over there, and you’ll need to pull your hair back.” She patted the net that covered her own dyed auburn hair. “Miss Jada will make sure you have one of these snazzy caps before she’ll let you touch any food.”

  “Sounds good,” Charissa said as she took off her stylish royal blue wool coat. With her bulky Irish fisherman’s sweater, it was hard to tell whether Charissa had started to show any baby bump yet. She would be the sort of tall, thin woman who could conceal her pregnancy for months if she wanted to.

  “You look good,” Hannah said when Charissa returned to the kitchen moments later. “You feeling well?”

  Charissa tucked her long dark hair up into the net. “Finally, thank God. I think the morning sickness might finally be behind me. First trimester, done. But if you see me make a quick exit, you’ll know the smell of food overpowered me.”

  “Just soup, salad, and bread today,” Mara said, motioning toward several large pots simmering on the stove. “They do their big meals on Sunday nights. Or try to, anyway. Miss Jada always says the loaves and fish will multiply, and they do. Somehow it always works.”

  Once the guests began to arrive, the three of them took their places with other volunteers behind the long buffet table, Mara ladling soup, Hannah serving salad, and Charissa pouring drinks and not correcting people who read her name tag and mispronounced her name while thanking her.

  Hannah eavesdropped as Mara warmly interacted with people who were obviously regular guests: Sam, wrinkled and toothless with naked women posing on his tattooed neck; Constance and her wide-eyed little girl named Lacey, who sucked her thumb while peering up at them from between her mother’s legs; and Rickie, a recently unemployed, single mom of three young boys, one of whom had evidently become attached to Kevin. “He’s in the gym,” Mara said when the little boy asked her if Kevin had come to play. “After you finish your lunch, you can go play basketball with him.”

  Just as the queue of hungry people was dwindling, an elderly man entered from the parking lot door and took his place at the end of the line. Dressed in baggy shorts and a long-sleeve gray T-shirt, he stared at his sandals while holding his plate, a handwritten price tag dangling from a thread affixed to his cuff with a safety pin. “God bless you, sir. God bless you, ma’am,” he murmured to each volunteer as he trudged by. From her peripheral vision Hannah watched Charissa greet him, pour him a glass of water, and then engage in conversation Hannah wasn’t quite able to hear. The next time Hannah glanced over her shoulder, Charissa was gone, overpowered, perhaps, by the smell.

  Charissa

  Even a pregnant woman could spend only so much time in a rest­­room before friends grew worried. Charissa Sinclair was staring at the bathroom mirror, trying to fix her mascara, when Mara entered. “You okay?”

  She had been doing great until the man with the shorts and sandals shuffled through the line, and then she’d lost her composure. Sub-freezing temperatures, eight inches of snow on the ground, and his only buffer against the cold was a dingy pair of tube socks. “They’ll help him, won’t they?” Charissa asked. “The man in the shorts—they’ll get him some clothes or shoes or something? You don’t think he’s actually living outside like that, do you?”

  “Don’t know,” Mara said. “Miss Jada’s on top of it, talking to him now. Haven’t seen him here before.”

  You look like my sister, the man had said to her. You ever live in Philly?

  No, Charissa replied. She had never been to Philadelphia.

  Last time I seen her, she was about your age. You could be her daughter or something. You a Monroe?

  No, she wasn’t. Her mother’s maiden name was Demetrios. But she hadn’t told him that, in case he was a con artist trying to finagle security information.

  The bathroom door creaked open. “Everything okay?” Hannah asked.

  Charissa swept her hair into a fresh ponytail. “Just pulling myself together. The last one got to me. The shorts and sandals, that little price tag dangling from his sleeve.”

  “Too bad Tom’s already cleared out his closet,” Mara said. “I would have loved bringing a whole bunch of his stuff here. Wish I’d thought of that sooner.”

  Great idea, Charissa thought. The man was about John’s height and build, short and lean, and John probably had half a dozen coats in their hall closet. She could go back to the apartment, ask him to donate a few, and deliver them to Crossroads right away.

  Funny, how she had lived in Kingsbury all her life and had never even heard of Crossroads before she met Mara. No—not funny. Sad. Before her parents moved to Florida, her father’s law office was located only three blocks from the shelter. Charissa could remember her mother’s firm, tugging grip whenever they bustled hand in hand from the parking garage to the office for a visit. Her mother always commanded her not to make eye contact and to ignore any stranger who spoke to her asking for money. Bums, her father called them. Nuisance, shiftless drunks. She had smelled alcohol on the breath of several of the—what did Miss Jada call them?—“guests” as they made their way through the lunch line. Point proved, her father would say.

  But there was no cloud of liquor engulfing the elderly man, only the stench of urine and perspiration permeating his clothes and a look of despair consuming his dove gray eyes. Just remember, Miss Jada had instructed all the volunteers, everybody you meet is made in Abba’s image. If you can’t see it, look harder. Ask for new eyes.

  So Charissa had focused on looking hard—praying to see—even while the dismissive, condemning voices clamored inside her head, the same voices that had once reviled Mara about her past. Now here they were, serving together as friends, proof there was hope for Pharisees to be converted to grace after all, even if the conversion process took longer than she liked.

  When they returned to the kitchen, Miss Jada was supervising meal cleanup. Charissa scanned the dining hall. “Couldn’t get him to stay,” Miss Jada replied when Charissa asked about him. “He just wanted some food, and then he was on his way again.”

  “Without a coat?”

  “Didn’t have one to give him. Already gave away all the coats from the Christmas clothing drive. Had a pair of sneakers and trousers that almost fit him, so he took those. And a blanket.”

  “But will he come back tonight or something? Did he say if he has a place to stay?”

  “Honey, he knows we’re here,” Miss Jada said, patting Charissa’s shoulder. “That’s about the best we can do.”

  Guess I was hoping you was family, the man had said to Charissa with a heavy sigh. Evidently, she had missed her opportunity to ask what had happened to his. If only she had been quicker on her feet.

  “When are you coming back?” she asked Mara as they donned well-insulated coats in the foyer.

  Mara glanced down the hallway toward Kevin, who was high-fiving a group of animated little boys. “Saturday, I think. Kev said he wants to come again before he starts school, and I’m gonna help with the lunch. Why? Wanna come?”

  “Yes, maybe. I’ll check with John to see what his schedule is.”

  Mara leaned forward to give Charissa a hug. “Forgot to say thank you,” she said. “For the donation you sent to Crossroads. Miss Jada gave me the car
d on Christmas. Never had anyone do anything in honor of me before. One of the best gifts I ever got. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I know how special this place is to you. I can see why.” Charissa was still watching the dining hall, hoping maybe the man would return, but the guests had cleared out, some of them back to the streets, some of them probably huddled on the sidewalk near her father’s old office.

  “Tell Meg we missed her,” Mara said to Hannah when she came out of the restroom. “One of these days we’ll get the whole Sensible Shoes Club here together.”

  “I know Meg would love that,” Hannah said, looping a loosely knit scarf several times around her neck. “And we also need to figure out whether we’re doing something together at New Hope or something else . . . some kind of next step. I want to keep moving forward. Deeper.”

  “Amen to that,” Mara said. “I was looking at the retreat schedule for the spring, but I really don’t think I can manage it right now, not with everything so up in the air with Tom and the boys.”

  Charissa had had the same thought. Between the house move and school and pregnancy and everything else going on over the next few months, she couldn’t commit to any more classes. But her childhood friend Emily was in a prayer group with women from her church, and when she and Charissa met for a power walk in the fall, Emily had spoken enthusiastically about their journey of spiritual formation. “I’ll check with a friend of mine,” Charissa said. “She’s been meeting with a group of women for a few years now, and maybe she’d be willing to share some details about what they’ve done together.”

  “That sounds good,” Mara said. “Maybe we could meet twice a month or something.”

  Charissa nodded. “I’d be happy to host, after we move into our house.”

  Hopefully, Meg wouldn’t feel awkward about that. Though she had insisted she was looking forward to visiting her old home again, it might be difficult for her after Charissa and John redecorated. With John’s elaborate plans for kitchen and bathroom remodels, the house would be significantly altered.

  On her way back to the apartment, Charissa drove to the 1920s cottage on Evergreen and parked in the driveway, the snowdrifts concealing the front steps. Just think, Riss! That front window there, that’ll be our baby’s room! John was the dreamer, often talking about “what it would be like when . . .” Charissa, on the other hand, had little time or imagination for such things. Most days it was enough for her to try to maintain some sense of equilibrium in the midst of all the dizzying changes that had occurred during the past couple of months. Thirteen weeks ago she was a PhD student with a fixed trajectory of achievement: she would be an English professor, and someday she and John might have a family. Now, that someday was a rapidly approaching July eleventh due date.

  “Just make sure my parents know you’re grateful and excited,” John had reminded her on multiple occasions during their three-day Christmas visit with his family in his hometown of Traverse City. John’s parents, who had given them money for a down payment, had embraced the news of their first grandchild with unbridled joy. Charissa, meanwhile, had expended considerable energy keeping pace with their enthusiasm. After a joint outing to Home Depot—“Just to browse through some possibilities,” her in-laws had said—she’d been ready to throw a tape measure at something. “Humor them,” John mouthed to her whenever his mother expressed her opinion about paint colors or light fixtures, or whenever his father recommended particular woodgrain finishes and cabinets.

  “It’s our house, right?” Charissa had hissed to John, who signaled for her to keep quiet. “Just checking,” she’d muttered.

  She appreciated her in-laws. She did. Even if she didn’t share a lot in common with them. Judi, Charissa suspected, had never fully understood John’s choice of wife. She had never esteemed her daughter-in-law’s achievements, her intellect, her drive. Judi had devoted her life to her children, a stay-at-home mom who attended every Little League game, ran the Parent-Teacher Association, managed the Music Boosters, coordinated fundraisers, organized class parties, and regularly provided healthy, balanced family meals at the dinner table. To hear John tell the stories, the woman was a legend in Traverse City.

  Charissa’s mother, on the other hand, was a top executive at a marketing and public relations firm, who had never volunteered at school because she worked full time. But she had attended every awards ceremony, beaming from the front row, and had monitored every achievement with pride. And many nights she had prepared delicious Mediterranean cuisine because cooking was her particular hobby, and she wanted to preserve her Greek heritage. To her disappointment, Charissa had not inherited her passion for food.

  During their premarital counseling sessions, Charissa and John had been asked to explore family of origin issues and how their parents had shaped expectations of roles and relationships. They had discussed similarities to their parents (“Analytical and cool under pressure, like my dad,” Charissa said, “and driven, very achievement-oriented like both of them”) as well as differences from them (“My mom is really emotional, with a Mediterranean passion for life, and you always know when she’s angry because she’ll tell you. Loudly. I’m more stoic”). She and John had emerged from two very different parenting models, and while they had affirmed their own agreement about roles and responsibilities, it probably wouldn’t hurt to revisit their expectations, now that they were pregnant.

  Her phone buzzed with a text from her mother: Call me.

  Thinking of expectations . . .

  Ever since telling her parents about the whole missing-her-final-presentation-of-the-semester fiasco, her mother had been determined to offer advice about how to rebuild her reputation, both with faculty and peers: You’ll have to redouble your efforts to prove yourself again, show them that you’re committed to this PhD program, that you’ll excel, no matter what, and that you won’t be slowed down by a baby. Take on some extra work; turn your presentation into a journal article or something. If you’re absolutely sure there’s no further possibility of appeal, you’ll have to do your best at damage control. We can figure out how to use this, how to spin it all for good.

  What Charissa hadn’t told her parents—what she knew they would have no capacity to understand—was that she had begun to fathom Dr. Allen’s words about perfectionism being a form of captivity, that what she deemed a failure might in fact be a work of grace in her life to set her free from years of shame and fear. “Everything has the potential to shape us, either to make us more like Christ or to make us more egocentric,” Dr. Allen frequently reminded her on the loop inside her head. By grace she had begun to see—particularly over the last few weeks—her socially acceptable forms of idolatry: her thirst for honor and recognition, her pursuit of excellence for her own sake, her deriving her sense of self not from her identity as the beloved in Christ but from her own achievements and reputation.

  “For freedom Christ has set us free,” she had read from Galatians 5:1 that morning. “Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.”

  Even when the gravitational pull toward that yoke exerted unyielding, relentless—and often well-intentioned—force.

  She picked up her phone to text Emily—Do you have any resources from your spiritual formation group that you can share with us? We’re eager to continue the journey together and could use some suggestions. Thanks and Happy New Year—and pressed Send.

  “You don’t need all these coats, do you?” Charissa slid the hangers in their apartment closet back and forth, the hooks clicking and scraping along the metal rod.

  John looked up from the cardboard box he was cramming with books. “Like what?”

  Charissa held up a tailored wool coat she’d seen him wear once.

  “Christmas gift last year from my mom.”

  “Do you need it?”

  “Yep.”

  She put it back in the closet and removed one of three heavy-lined jackets. “How about this one?”

  He squinted at it. “From North Face? Yep
—keep.”

  “Okay, how about this?” A black one, not from North Face.

  “Keep.” He dragged the packing tape dispenser along the top of the box and pressed the seal closed.

  “This one?” she asked. John had been wearing this gray one since she’d met him in college, and it was tattered along the cuffs.

  “Still fits.” He assembled another box, the tape squeaching along the seams.

  “But do you need it?”

  “We’ve got good closet space at the house, remember?”

  “That’s not what I asked—I asked if you need it.”

  He sat back on his heels. “I don’t need to get rid of it.”

  “Fine.” She kept shifting hangers. “Then you come here and pick one, please. I’m trying to find something I can donate to Crossroads. They’re all out of coats, and we have a glut.” She chose two coats she hadn’t worn in a few seasons and flung them over the back of a chair. There might not be many five-foot-ten women in need, but the coats would be long and warm on someone.

  “Take the black one, then,” John said.

  She added the black one to the pile. “How about hats and gloves?” She held up a crate stuffed with winter accessories.

  He rose to his feet and brushed off his jeans. “Tell you what. Here—I’ll work on the closet, you clear out the bookshelves.”

  She traded places with him. Too bad all of her children’s books were at her parents’ house in Florida. Maybe she could purchase some used books at a thrift store. Mara had mentioned that Kevin enjoyed reading to the kids.

  When John’s cell phone rang with the Star Wars theme, he strode into the kitchen to take the call. Though he didn’t speak a name, Charissa could tell after the first couple of sentences that it was his mother—again—offering another suggestion regarding the house. Curtains, carpet, floor rugs maybe. If Charissa had known that accepting the down payment would create the opportunity for her in-laws to exert jurisdiction, she might have refused the gift.