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  A part of her mind — a very small part — warned her that she shouldn’t be doing this, that she was walking down that dangerous path again. But the majority of her head and all of her hormones were thinking it was so nice to be held by male arms again, and Kazuo could be so kind when he tried.

  “Trish!”

  Venus’s sharp voice made her jump, cracking the top of her head back against Kazuo’s chin. She pushed against him, but his arms wouldn’t let go easily. It was like trying to peel off cobwebs. She finally jabbed him in the ribs.

  Venus had struck a pose in the middle of the room, hands on hips, leaning on one leg. “Didn’t we just pray for you a couple hours ago at my apartment?” Even her unwelcoming posture didn’t deter some of the other men in the room from taking a second look.

  Maybe Trish should rethink Kazuo, because he was one of the few guys who didn’t seem attracted to Venus at all. Well, it probably helped that he’d spent time in conversation with her and knew her extreme views on the general uselessness of the male species.

  Lex’s look was hardly more welcoming. “Guess you didn’t need us.”

  Trish chewed frantically on the inside of her lip and tasted blood. “Well, it’s been pretty rough, and Kazuo just got here . . . Wait a minute, how did you know?” She turned to look up at him.

  “I was with your grandmother when she found out.”

  Of course. She thought she heard Lex mutter, “Grandma’s dating ser vice never closes.”

  “Hey, where’s Jenn?”

  Venus waved her hand, which held her cell phone. “She called and said her mom is having problems tonight. She can’t make it.”

  Oh. Aunty Yuki hadn’t been looking too good after her last chemo. Now Trish knew how Jenn felt, seeing her mother so sick.

  An Asian female doctor burst through the swinging doors. “Mr. Sakai?”

  Dad zipped in front of the woman in a flash. Faster than Trish had expected him to, at least. She had to practically push Grandma out of the way as she got there.

  “ . . . heart attack. She’s resting now. Immediate family can see her for a few minutes. Mr. Sakai, you and your daughter can follow the nurse over there.”

  Grandma’s eyes darkened. “I’m her mother.”

  The doctor stared her down. “You told the nurses you’re her mother-in-law, Mrs. Sakai.”

  Grandma sniffed and lengthened her neck, which didn’t do her any good since she still stood a good five inches shorter than the doctor, who looked like she relished dealing with recalcitrant people.

  Trish scurried after her father and the nurse through the swinging doors.

  She almost burst into tears when she saw Mom on the bed. She’d aged ten years. Trish had rarely seen her mother at rest. Her eyes weren’t darting around — instead, they stayed fixed on the TV set above her, and then lazily swung to Trish and Dad. Her hands weren’t moving like they did even when she wasn’t talking — they lay relaxed and open against the white sheets.

  Man, they must have drugged her up good.

  Her mom’s gaze softened at the sight of Dad, which made Trish’s fists clench at her sides. Dad could exert his charm with a look, and all was forgiven. Well, not for her.

  Mom’s eyes shifted to Trish, and pain flooded them.

  What? She forgave the philanderer but blamed the bringer of bad news? So not fair. Trish rubbed her breastbone. It had only pricked a little. Just a little. It wasn’t like a red-hot poker jabbed into her chest by her own mother.

  They sat on either side of the bed. Dad picked up her hand — an unusual instance of PDA, probably trying to impress the nurse and ingratiate himself with his wife — so Trish took the other hand.

  “Everyone’s in the waiting room, Marian.” Dad smiled at her, not too brightly, but not too sadly, either. The right amount of hopeful concern. He was such a faker. “I brought my mom, too.”

  Mom turned to Trish. “Did Grandma tell you about the rumors?”

  Huh? “What rumors?”

  Mom sighed, a deep heaving groan that seemed to deflate her. “I heard about it today. This morning. How you were sleeping around, so Kazuo dumped you.”

  “What? Dumped me? I dumped him! And I wasn’t sleeping around.” Trish’s fingers twitched. She tried to relax her grip so she wouldn’t squeeze and break Mom’s fragile bones. “Those are all lies.”

  With a rasping breath, Mom sighed again. “Sweetheart . . .”

  Dad leaned toward her. “You know how they are, pumpkin. Plus you and your cousins are so adamantly against going to temple. It makes people think you’re judging them.”

  Trish chewed on her cheek even as her other hand rubbed at the pulsing behind her eyes. “You know that’s not true.” A pack of lies. Who’d say such nasty things? Kazuo’s friends? Except he didn’t have many friends. He was a typical artist — lonely and moody.

  “They’re only rumors . . .” Mom closed her eyes. She hated things like this, because she couldn’t fix them. Especially not now.

  Dad’s sad gaze took in his wife’s tired face. “Trish, why don’t you go out to the waiting room? This is upsetting your mother.”

  And leave her alone with the lying weasel?

  Mom’s eyes opened a crack. “Go, Trish. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Trish swallowed around the ball of fire in her throat. Prickling numbness raced down her limbs. She dropped Mom’s hand before she could feel Trish trembling. She stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She walked to the waiting room.

  Grandma grabbed her arm. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s tired, but she’s okay.” Her cousins gathered near. Trish should have felt warm with so many people crowding around her, but she shivered and shifted from side to side on stiff legs.

  Kazuo appeared next to her, and she felt a little spark of warmth in her heart. Not a good kind of heat, but at least she could feel something. His arm snaked around her in a concerned but rather intimate gesture.

  Trish stepped away from him. They weren’t dating anymore. She had to remember that, even though she’d like to just lean on him and let him take care of her like he used to.

  Wait, what was she thinking? Her behavior with Kazuo might be the very reason all this was happening. She didn’t know if God’s wrath came down on people like this — did it?

  Grandma sighed. “She’s so young. Why did this have to happen to her?”

  Why Mom? Why not Trish? Mom hadn’t done anything bad. Well, apart from being a staunch Buddhist and only smiling politely when Trish talked about Christ.

  Maybe because God knew this would hurt Trish more, to see her mom suffer. More painful flagellation for her fornication.

  Or maybe because God wanted to give her a second chance. He let the Israelites repent tons of times, right? Maybe this was his way of saying, Now is the time for you to turn your life around, babe.

  Trish sank into a chair. Kazuo tried to sit next to her, but Venus and Lex muscled in and flanked her instead. They knew her better than anyone — knew her nature, knew she needed protection from both Kazuo and herself.

  Trish didn’t care who sat with her. She no longer needed someone to hold her hand.

  After tonight ended, she needed some time alone with God.

  FIVE

  A biologist’s work was never done.

  Not when cancer cells grew exponentially regardless of whether it was a regular workweek or the holidays. Trish spent most of New Year’s Day — just a few hours after leaving the hospital — in her cell culture room at Valley Pharmaceuticals, doing damage control.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if two incubators hadn’t decided to give up the ghost over the New Year’s weekend.

  As it was, three of her studies had to be trashed, and she had been at work all day trying to salvage what cells were still alive. Her boss Diana was not going to be happy about this, because her boss’s boss had been waiting on the results of the studies that were now in the biohazard trash bin. Emergencies piled on top of stre
ss, piled on top of lack of sleep.

  But nothing that one of Jenn’s homemade dark chocolate truffles couldn’t solve.

  Finally done with work and relaxing at home, Trish sat in the dip in her living room couch, licked chocolate off her fingers, and stared at the closed Bible in her lap. She was procrastinating, but she couldn’t seem to get going. A wound-up nervousness vibrated in her hands, in her legs, in the pit of her stomach. Or maybe it was exhausted energy from her sleepless night and busy day.

  She stared at her goldfish, who piddled around in his bowl on the counter top. Gonzo the umpteenth — she named all her goldfish after her favorite Muppet character.

  The train chugged by outside her apartment, leaving Mountain View for Sunnyvale. What time was it? Would her roommate Marnie come home soon? She’d been gone when Trish had dashed in for a change of clothes before heading into work. Good thing she only had a short commute to Palo Alto.

  What would she do about dinner? She was too tired to cook. She could go out — there were lots of good restaurants on nearby Castro Street — but she hated eating alone. And even if Marnie were home, she wouldn’t ask her along — she had given up trying to be better friends with her. When they’d first started rooming together a few months ago, she’d coaxed Marnie into going out to dinner with her a few times, but Marnie was always so quiet and closed that Trish ended up babbling like an idiot and feeling like one, too.

  She really couldn’t complain, because Marnie was a good roommate — quiet, hardly any visitors except for her boyfriend, and about as neat and tidy as Trish, which was somewhere between “slob” and “a household with toddlers.” Which reminded her, it was her turn to vacuum this week . . .

  Stop it. Get going. She yanked open her Bible. She stared at the page a moment without reading anything.

  Get a grip. Wait, maybe I should pray before I dive into this. She sighed.

  Dear God.

  The blank walls answered her, waving dusty cobwebs in the breeze flowing from the window. She really should clean up the apartment . . .

  No, she needed to focus. Dear God —A key rattled in the lock, then Marnie Delacruz ambled in. Her favored loose knit clothes in predominantly blues and greens made her seem even shorter and rounder than she already was. She looked like she always did — as if her pet had just died.

  “Hi Marnie!” Trish infused excitement in her voice in hopes that Marnie would respond with something other than a grunt.

  “Hi.” Just that one word. Her full, un-lipsticked mouth set in its normal half-frown. She dropped her keys onto the kitchen counter and smoothed back her crowning glory, her waterfall of dark hair that fell to the back of her thighs. She pulled her computer briefcase off her sagging shoulder.

  “You went into work today too?”

  She ran a hand over her chipmunk cheeks — which should have made her look cheerful but didn’t — and sighed. “Server crashed.”

  Trish winced. “Ooh, bummer.”

  Marnie shrugged.

  Conversation over.

  Well, Marnie did have a slight flush under her olive skin tone, and she looked a little sadder than usual, which Trish took to mean she was tired. Marnie tended to get even less talkative when tired — she often collapsed in front of the TV in a heap after a long day at work.

  But today, Marnie surprised her. “Is your mom okay?”

  Trish blinked at her for a few seconds before she swallowed her surprise. “Yeah. I talked with Dad.” A stilted conversation. “She’s doing okay.”

  “Heart attack?” Marnie opened the fridge.

  “Yeah. They’re holding her for observation.” And probably to keep her heart-attack-inducing daughter away from her. “She’s going to need quiet for the next few months. Someone with her to care for her.”

  “Your dad?”

  Trish looked away. “Dad refused to hire a nurse, said he’d take care of her himself. I was surprised.” She didn’t understand. It would seriously cramp his tomcatting around. Maybe he hadn’t wanted a nurse observing both Mom’s health and his behavior.

  Marnie popped open a can of soda. For some reason, she had a rather misty, faraway look in her large dark eyes that made Trish wonder if Marnie was coming down with something. “He must love her a lot.”

  Trish’s stomach clenched, and she pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t gag. She felt trapped — she couldn’t talk to her mom about his affair while she was recovering, but she didn’t want to talk to her father, either. For now there was nothing she could do. “I guess.”

  Slurping her soda, Marnie wandered into the TV area and peered at Trish’s lap. “Doing your church stuff?”

  She closed her glaringly blank notebook. What a great witness to her atheist roommate. “I just started. I’ll go to my room if you want to watch TV.”

  Marnie dropped into the couch almost before Trish vacated it and reached for the remote control on the coffee table. “Yeah, I don’t want to keep you from your Bible reading.”

  Trish gritted her teeth at Marnie’s pointed tone. Sure, she wasn’t the best Christian on the planet, but Marnie didn’t have to mock her. She padded into her bedroom and shut the door.

  Flopping onto her futon bed, she arranged her Bible and notebook in front of her. She bowed her head. Dear Lord. Um . . . well, I guess I haven’t been reading my Bible like I should. I’m sorry about that. But I could use some answers now. She felt a whining attack surge up, but she shoved it down. I feel kind of weird coming to you now. I know my behavior lately hasn’t been very Christian-like, and I’m sorry. I mean, I’m really sorry this time. A lot of bad things happened yesterday . . . Well, duh, you already knew that. So I guess I’m hoping this means you’re giving me a second chance to turn things around. Please help me. I don’t deserve it, but please give me some grace.

  Trish filled her lungs until her ribs felt tight and stretched. As she exhaled, peace like a slow, gentle wave washed over her heart, sweeping the jittery tension away. She flipped the Bible open, and it landed at the beginning of 1 Corinthians. She started reading.

  Her heart skipped a beat as she read chapter one: “He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless . . .”

  Blameless. She’d like to be blameless and pure, instead of a mess. And did that verse mean Christ would keep her strong so she could stay blameless?

  Could she be blameless again? Could she regain what she’d lost? Well, not literally — she knew she couldn’t regain her virginity, which she’d carelessly lost several boyfriends ago, unknown to her cousins. But could she regain everything else? Her chastity, her cousins’ love and support, her ruined reputation?

  She’d always treated God kind of like a genie to save her when she needed Him. But now she wanted to be a better person. She wanted to make better choices. She wanted to be in a better place than the miserable dilemma she was in now, tempted by Kazuo’s presence and by Grandma’s approval of him.

  She wanted her chastity back. If she could do that, then everything would be the same as it was before.

  The Word spoke to her again in chapter seven: “I would like you to be free from concern . . . I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.”

  Trish almost popped off her bed. Undivided devotion to the Lord. That’s the spiritual place she needed to be. God wanted her to be devoted to Him. Undividedly.

  Undistractedly.

  Wait a minute. Undistracted? Guys distracted her everywhere. Her eye always roved around. She always yearned and wondered, Is he available? He’s cute. Oh, and his friend is darling. Aw, he’s being nice to that old lady — he must be a great guy . . .

  But if she was undistracted, she’d only be thinking about the Lord’s affairs, like it said in the seventh chapter of 1 Corin thians. Although to be completely honest, that sounded kind of boring.

  Undistracted devotion. Hmm. She’d have to think about that later.

  All w
eek Trish continued through First and Second Corinthians, taking notes and jotting down verses that leaped off the page. On Thursday night, she sat in her bedroom reading 2 Corinthians, when a verse struck like a lightning bolt. She gasped and straightened her spine with a jerk.

  Unfortunately, at the time she was perched on the seat-back of her chair with her toes dug into the seat cushion. Her sudden movement tipped her balance and propelled the chair backwards.

  Trish’s arms flailed in a blur before her eyes, and she toppled with a sound like a cat hacking up a furball. She landed hard on her tailbone and collected two rug burns on her elbows. In a flurry of pages, her Bible flopped onto her chest.

  Trish scrambled to her feet. Her bedroom shared a wall with the living room, where Marnie watched TV. She hoped the Spanish-language soap opera had muted her bumping across the carpet. She dropped her Bible onto the desk and pulled her chair upright, resisting the urge to give it a solid kick — her toes would lose, anyway.

  Where had she been reading? Trish sat in the chair — properly, this time — and flipped through the creased pages. There, chapter five: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

  She had always assumed it talked about the process of becoming a new Christian, but maybe it applied to old backslidden ones, too. Not that she was old, just . . . well, old enough to know better.

  She could completely shed her old self, her old problems, her old temptations (namely, Kazuo) and jump whole-heartedly into a new self. A new adventure for life. How cool!

  “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

  Get back with God and tell others. Sure! She could do that. She had no problems talking.