Chapter 16
SITTING SO NEAR TO CARLOS WITH the pastor’s words echoing in her heart, Anika felt the faint stirrings of something that she hadn’t in years— hope. Sure she had hoped for the money to pay for Megan’s doll house. This was different. This was deeper. The type of feeling that resonated in a person’s soul, so overwhelming that it could chase out years of treading with light steps and encourage her to step boldly out into the world, filled with, of all dangerous things, hope that everything would work out in the end. That the broken path she’d carefully traversed could be so easily left behind and the dust shaken from her shoes. It was scary, dangerous territory that her logical side screamed at her to run from, hide.
With Carlos’s arm around her, and the tender way he brushed the
