Introduction

From the best-selling author of Crossing Oceans comes a heartrending yet uplifting story of friendship and redemption. On the cusp of adulthood, eighteen-year-old Penny Carson is swept off her feet by a handsome farmhand with a confident swagger. Though Trent Taylor seems like Prince Charming and offers an escape from her one-stop-sign town, Penny's happily-ever-after lasts no longer than their breakneck courtship. Before the ink even dries on their marriage certificate, he hits her for the first time. It isn't the last, yet the bruises that can't be seen are the most painful of all.

When Trent is injured in a welding accident and his paycheck stops, he has no choice but to finally allow Penny to take a job cleaning houses. Here she meets two women from very different worlds who will teach her to live and laugh again, and lend her their backbones just long enough for her to find her own.

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Excerpt

Prologue

He always said if I left he would kill me, but there are far worse fates than death. Guess I hadn’t really known that until I met and married Trent Taylor. I didn’t mind the cuts and bruises half as much as the insults and accusations. Whoever said “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” has never been on the other end of a tongue that really knows how to cut.

I hope you never know that kind of pain, Son. More than that, I hope you never cause it. How could you? You have such a soft heart. My sweet Emmanuel.

Surely by now I’ve told you your name means “God with us.” Because he was, Manny. He is. Even if you haven’t realized it yet, you’re lucky to have such a wonderful name. I used to hate mine—Penny—because that’s exactly how much I felt I was worth for most of my life. But God used you to change all that.

It’s important to tell you before I begin this story that it’s not my intention to make you hate your father. He’s a man—fallen, like the rest of us. But I know you’ll ask about him, and I decided when you were old enough, I would share with you all I know. That day hasn’t come yet—you’re just beginning to talk!—but I’d best write it down while it’s fresh in my mind. Although some of it, I know, will never fade.

Reading this won’t be easy, and please don’t feel you have to if it’s too much. I’m not one to believe all truths need to be spoken, but just in case you want to know, need to know, I’d rather you hear it from me as a whole story than get bits and pieces of the puzzle from others and not be able to make them fit together quite right.

Besides, your grandmother told me long ago the best way not to repeat history is to know it. I think that’s probably right.

1

Trent Taylor sauntered into my life wearing faded blue jeans, dusty work boots, and an attitude I couldn’t take my eyes off.

We had a bumper crop that summer of ’99, so Daddy was able to hire a farmhand to help for a change. We were all so happy to have a little money in our pockets and another set of harvesting hands, we didn’t look a gift horse in his mouth. It was just like that story from the Trojan War. We all let him right in without looking first to see what was inside him.

It’s surreal to think that if the rains hadn’t fallen just right and the price of tobacco hadn’t been up due to a blight that seemed to be hitting every farm but ours, we wouldn’t have been able to afford to hire Trent. How much pain I could have been spared . . . but then I wouldn’t have you, Manny. I’d go through it all a million times just to have you.

Being late August, the air outside was steam and the smell of the roast Daddy insisted Mama cook every Thursday carried past me on what little breeze there was. As usual, our cat, Seymour, kept busy chasing the chickens around the yard. He loved to terrorize those poor birds. I yelled at him like I always did, but he never paid me—or anyone besides Daddy—any mind.

Until that afternoon, I’d never seen those chickens do anything but run from mean old Seymour, but that day the smallest one turned around and pecked him right between the eyes. I still laugh when I think of that cat howling in surprise and jumping back ten feet in the air, tail first, as if God himself had snatched him, only to drop him.

After Seymour tore off and the chickens returned to scratching dirt, I bent over my laundry basket and got back to work, humming something or other through the splintered clothespins tucked between my lips.

Even though we owned a dryer, your grandpappy hardly ever let Mama or me use it. He couldn’t see the sense in wasting money on electricity when the sun and wind would do the job for free. I would have offered to pay the measly expense myself, but in my father’s household, women were meant to be seen working, not heard complaining.

I bent down to pin up my daddy’s undershorts, doing my best not to touch anything but the outermost corner of the waistband, when I felt hot breath on the back of my ear and a rough hand cover my own. Paralyzed, I just stood there staring straight ahead at the dirt road leading from our driveway. I could feel my pulse pounding my temples as I held my breath.

Trent must have taken my lack of protest as encouragement because his other hand wrapped tight around my waist and he yanked me back against him. He whispered in my ear with a voice somehow both rough as sandpaper and smooth as whipped cream, “This better be the last time I ever see my woman touching another man’s underwear.”

I could barely breathe. At seventeen, I’d never been touched by a man except to have my tail whipped for disobeying. I’d never even held a boy’s hand, and here was a man, a grown man, staking claim to me. Just then, the screen door squealed open and your grandpappy’s heavy footsteps pounded across the porch.

When Trent stepped back, I finally got the courage to turn around and look him in the eye. He’d been around for a couple of weeks by then and I’d seen him dozens of times, but until that moment, I hadn’t noticed the crinkles around his eyes that made him look like he was always squinting against the sun, or the small scar cutting into the fullness of his bottom lip. His longish hair was a shade darker than my dirty blonde, and there was something about the way his nose flared just so that brought to mind a fighter plane. People might have said a lot of things about your father back then, but no one could suggest he wasn’t beautiful.

“What are you doing over there?” My father stood on the porch, leaning his hip against the column and holding a glass of water that was sweating as much as he was.

I yanked up my laundry basket, still half full, intending to bound inside, but didn’t make it a step before I felt that rough hand of Trent’s wrap tight around my wrist again.

“Just taking a break,” he said to my father, though he never took his eyes off me. He stared right through me, wearing a smirk. I would get to know that Cheshire grin real well in the years that followed. It was the look he wore when he knew he had won, or was about to. I wonder just what it was he had seen that gave me away.

“You best get on back to work.” Daddy’s voice was loud as thunder, and it shook me.

Trent’s grin only widened. “Now, don’t be that way to your future son-in-law.” His eyes wandered over the front of me like he was eyeing a ham steak he was getting ready to cut into.

Those roving eyes of his sent unfamiliar jolts through me.

Daddy slammed down his glass on the porch ledge. “Are you listening, boy? I ain’t going to tell you again.”

Trent put his hands up like he was under arrest. “Take it easy, man. I’m just talking to her.”

My heart felt like a butterfly caught in a mason jar. No one spoke to my father that way.

What an idiot I was to think Trent’s bravado was because he was so taken with me. In my mind I was the princess, Daddy was the dragon, and Trent, of course, was the knight who’d come to rescue me from the tower.

With my father’s eyes on us, Trent whispered I was the prettiest thing he ever laid eyes on. I twisted my mouth like he was crazy, but inside, I was done for. I’d never had a man tell me I was pretty.

I took the bait. With one pathetic cast of his line, I was snagged, swallowing his words happily as that hook dug deep into my flesh.

When Daddy’s face took on a shade of sunburn and he started down the stairs, Trent pretended to tip the hat he wasn’t wearing and leaned over to whisper that he would be waiting for me at the well at midnight and his woman had best be there. Woman, I repeated in my mind, liking the sound of it. He reeled me in that night, and before week’s end I’d agreed to elope.

At Trent’s direction, I left a note for my parents telling them they shouldn’t come looking for me.

Despite my fears, though—and eventually, my hopes—my parents never did come knocking to reclaim me. No one did. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

1. Penny gets angry and defensive when her friends try to confront her with the truth about Trent’s behavior. Have you ever reacted that way when someone tries to tell you something you don’t want to hear? How can we learn to be open to friends who try to “speak the truth in love” to us?
2. Trent repeatedly says—and occasionally shows—that he wants to change. Was Penny right to believe him? Did you believe him? What more could he have done if he was sincere about wanting to become a different (healthier) person? What do you think the future holds for Trent?
3. Callie Mae, a loving and godly woman, struggles with the habit of smoking. And she accuses the woman who confronts her about it of gluttony. What are some other habits or lifestyle choices we sometimes develop that are bad for our health—and may compromise our ability to reflect Christ to others? What are some ways we might work on overcoming them?
4. There are a few times when Penny actually seems to want Trent to hurt her. “I think I wanted him to beat me then. Feeling the physical pain was so much better than the anguish eating me up inside” (ch. 20). And “I realized then I was trying to provoke him, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because deep down I thought I deserved to be beaten. Maybe I enjoyed being the martyr. Or I was just addicted to the making up that was sure to follow” (ch. 35). What could make a woman feel that way? What are some ways she could get help for whatever it is that’s causing those feelings? What are some other self-destructive patterns you see in your life or the life of someone you love?
5. Fatimah and Callie both tell Penny that if she wants things to change, she herself must change. Do you agree with that statement? Why is making changes in our own lives and behavior often so difficult? What holds you back from making a positive change in your circumstances?
6. Callie Mae tells Penny, “You’re addicted to an abusive man.” Do you agree with Callie’s assessment? Why or why not? What are some other things—besides alcohol or drugs—that a person can develop an unhealthy dependence on? What does it take to break the cycle?
7. For a long time, Penny says she doesn’t want to leave Trent because being with him is better than being alone. Why are familiar, though unpleasant, circumstances often more attractive than the unfamiliar and the unknown? What relationships or circumstances are you clinging to, just because they’re familiar, when you might be better off without them?
8. Callie Mae helps Penny reframe her situation by asking, “If you had a daughter, and she came to you and told you her husband was treating her the way Trent is treating you, would your advice be to stay with him?” (ch. 23). Why is it sometimes easier to see what’s going on in a situation involving someone else than in our own situation? What’s going on in your life right now that might benefit from some reframing? Who has God placed in your life who can help you do that?
9. Pastor Harold asks Penny, “Why isn’t grace enough?” and Penny herself wonders why it isn’t. How would you answer that question for Penny? Is God’s grace alone sufficient for all life’s challenges, or does God’s grace sometimes require a response or action from us? And if it does sometimes require a response, how can we tell if a given situation is one of those times?
10. Callie tells Penny that God will not manipulate someone into doing something the person doesn’t want to do, even if other people are begging for his intervention. Have you ever pleaded with God to change a loved one? What was the outcome? Why do you think God allows people to have free will even when it means other people might get hurt?
11. With the support of a friend and her pastor, Penny stages an intervention with Trent. Do you think that was a good idea? Why or why not? What might Penny have done differently that could have led to a better outcome? Have you ever tried to confront a loved one about a serious problem in this way? How did—or would—you go about it?

Weblinks

»	Gina Holmes' web site
»	Publisher's Book Info

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