A quick search on my newly retrieved phone confirmed that these were not just any dogs. They were the most diminutive of all dog breeds.

I didn’t even stop to question why the Almighty had sent me five Chihuahuas in need as an early gift for His birthday. I didn’t have to, because right then I knew beyond the shadow of any doubt these dogs were meant to find us. Surviving that cold Christmas Eve outdoors was only the first of many miracles that mama dog and her pups would bring to our congregation…

Chapter 1

Harmony

Thirteen months later

Harmony King had been running for a long time. At first, she was always running toward something—more specifically, toward freedom. Growing up in the foster care system would not be how she’d chosen to start life, and she definitely wouldn’t have elected to remain a slave to that system until her eighteenth birthday finally set her loose.

But that’s exactly what had happened, anyway.

All those years as a little girl with no home to call her own, she longed to live life her own way, to be the master of her own fate. Somehow, though, she’d only managed to continue her lifestyle of drifting from one place to the next without feeling any real connection.

It made her wonder: was she born broken, or had that just happened along the way?

Because, no question about it, something was majorly wrong with her.

That was part of why she’d returned to Charleston. As much as she’d fought to escape the Holy City as a teen, truth be told, it was the only place she’d even come close to belonging.

Her homes had shuffled about faster than a magician preparing his cards, but a kindly agent at Child Protection Services had fought to keep her in the same schools growing up. It was the only constant she’d had up until that point.

When she could, she would sneak away to the Eternal Grace Church and listen to the pastor regale his congregation with tales of fortitude, forgiveness, charity. Jesus had been a poor wanderer, too—and Harmony liked that. It made him relatable, although when she’d mentioned this to her foster mother at the time she’d earned a cold, hard slap on the cheek and her fastest reassignment to date.

This experience strained her relationship with the church, but she still managed to attend services at least once per month by scraping together any spare change she could find to purchase a bus ticket that would deliver her to the service and hopefully, one day, salvation.

Sometimes she’d even pretend the pastor was her long-lost father and that one day they’d realize their relation and hug each other, sobbing big, ol’ tears for all the time they’d already lost. But Harmony knew this was just a dream. She knew nothing of her birth father other than that he could have been any number of men. Her mother, who had been the very worst kind of junkie, died when Harmony was just four. But sometimes, if she clenched her eyes shut real tight, she could call up the memory of her mother’s face.