Even her mother, after the divorce, had lost a ton of weight, started coloring her hair, and dating men who, like her, all tried to look younger and more hip than they really were. Eventually Claudia O’Toole had remarried. Tom Browning, a long-haul trucker, was nice enough, but he’d destroyed Ariel’s tiny dream that her parents would get back together.

So, Ariel had turned from her family to her faith…until college.

“God forgive me.”

From her knees she glanced up at the life-sized crucifix hanging between two tall stained-glass windows. The statue of Jesus, wearing his crown of thorns, his head, hands, and side bleeding, arms stretched wide, stared benevolently down upon her.

I am the light….

She could hear the words He told all of those who believed in Him.

“Dear Lord.” She squeezed her eyes shut against her tears. Why, if Christ was so near, so caring, was she always so lonely? Why did she feel abandoned?

“Be with me,” she intoned. “Please, Father.”

Never before had she been so confused about her religion. Never before had she questioned the tenets of the church, never had she been so tempted…

She made the sign of the cross deftly, as she had thousands of times in her life.

She’d never been away from home before…well at least not for any length of time. Sure, she’d stayed with her father every other weekend for a while, then less often. And yes, there had been the time she’d run off with Cal Sievers when she’d found she was pregnant…even that precious little baby hadn’t survived. Ariel, unfit to be a mother, had miscarried in her third month.

Now she bit down on her lower lips and felt her shoulders shake. She’d wanted that baby, that small little life who would love her, but even the infant, whom she sensed was a girl and had named Brandy, had left.

Knees aching, she swallowed hard, tasted the salt of her tears in her throat, and thought about the group she’d joined, those who had willingly embraced her.

No questions asked.

No judgments made.

And the leader…She stared up at the crucifix, felt that Christ could see into her soul, notice the tarnish around its edges.

She loved God. She did.

But she needed friends. A family here on earth.

Her own parents weren’t interested.

The girls in the sororities were a bunch of shallow, self-indulgent snobs.

But her new friends…