The Savior She Had Begged God For

Prologue

Warm, happy chatter emanated from the kitchen. The smell of herbs and roast chicken filled the air, savory and mouth-watering. Someone told a joke, and someone else laughed, but the words drifted past Rachel Foster’s ears. She barely heard them.

She stood outside the kitchen, her back pressed to the wall in the hallway as though allowing it to hold her upright.

As she so often did, Rachel felt older than her twenty-four years.

The exhaustion of constant labor had worked its way through her body.

She was thinner than she ought to be—the strings of her apron wound all the way around her body, crossing in the back and tying again in the front.

Her hands were dried and cracked from too much use.

A few wisps of her chestnut hair had begun to spill free from the orderly bun she had tied it back in this morning before leaving her bedroom.

She’d had no time since that moment to return to her room and fix her appearance.

That was probably going to cause trouble.

One of the voices rose louder than the others. Rough and masculine. Commanding. “We need more iced tea! Rachel! Get in here!”

Rachel drew a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and pushed her way back through the kitchen door.

Her stepfather, Nathan, was leaning back in his chair and watching her expectantly, his hands resting on his rotund belly.

A scowl crossed his ruddy face at the sight of her.

“You shouldn’t let the glasses go empty on Jennifer’s eighteenth birthday,” he snapped.

“Surely we’ve raised you better than that. ”

All sorts of responses would have been satisfying to give.

Rachel wanted to tell him that he hadn’t actually raised her at all.

She wanted to tell him that the people who had brought her up had never taught her that her role in life was to pour drinks for her own family, or that she ought to succumb to anyone snapping at her as if she was nothing more than an unpaid servant.

She also wanted to grab the pitcher, set it down in front of him, untie the brown apron he made her wear, throw it on the floor, and walk out of this house once and for all.

But she couldn’t. Not without a plan. Not without somewhere else to go. If she left this house today, Nathan would never permit her to come back, and it was more likely than not she would find herself out on the street.

Rachel steeled herself and walked over to the table.

It was full of delicious food—food she had spent the morning preparing.

In addition to the herbed chicken, there were buttery vegetables and mashed potatoes with gravy.

She had managed to sneak a little bit of each of those dishes for herself, but there had been no hope of taking a taste of the chicken.

Nathan would have noticed if so much as a single bite of that was missing.

The pitcher of iced tea sat in the middle of the table. Nathan could have reached out and picked it up if he had wanted to. Not that he would ever deign to do anything for himself. His eyes fixed on her mother, Sandra, as she lifted the pitcher and poured some into his glass.

Rachel’s mother looked much older than her forty-one years. Her hair had gone gray and her face was lined with worry. She had been a beauty once, but her years of marriage to Nathan Foster had sucked the beauty from her face. Now she just looked tired and broken.

Rachel carried the pitcher of tea around the table and poured some in her mother’s glass, taking a moment to rest a hand on her shoulder.

There were so few opportunities for the two of them to talk.

And even when those opportunities did arise, Sandra seemed incapable of making the most of them.

She had lost the ability to speak in front of her husband, it seemed.

The light inside her had gone out. She kept her head down as Rachel filled her glass and didn’t respond to her daughter’s touch.

It was as if she didn’t even realize Rachel was there.

“That’s enough,” Nathan said brusquely. “She doesn’t need any more, Rachel. And you should be filling Jennifer’s glass, since she’s the one celebrating her birthday.”

“That’s right,” Rachel’s stepsister spoke up, sitting up straight in her chair. She shook back her limp, dark blonde hair, picked up her glass, which was still three-quarters full, and held it out to Rachel. “You should have served me first, Rachel.”

Rachel knew perfectly well that if she had served Jennifer first, Nathan would have objected to the fact that he hadn’t been first. There was simply no way to make these people happy. She poured a little more iced tea into Jennifer’s glass.

Jennifer frowned. “There’s not enough ice,” she said. “You gave your mother all the ice.”

“If I had put any more ice in your glass, it would have spilled over,” Rachel pointed out.

“Don’t argue,” Nathan told her. He picked up a chicken bone from his plate and began to nibble the meat off it. “Just fix it.”

Rachel took Jennifer’s glass to the sink and poured out a bit of the tea. Using a spoon, she carefully fished out a few ice cubes from the pitcher and placed them in the glass. Then she returned it to Jennifer, who narrowed her beady eyes at it and nodded.

“We’re going to want the cake served in fifteen minutes,” Nathan told her. “You can come back then.”

She heard the dismissal, but she lingered. “Nathan—I wondered if I might take a piece of cake for myself and Edith to share?”

Her stepfather stared at her. “Excuse me?”

“Well, it’s just that Edith’s birthday was last week,” Rachel said. Her heart fluttered with nerves as she watched the muscle in her stepfather’s jaw work. “I wasn’t able to do anything for her to help her celebrate the occasion.”

“Why would you need to help her celebrate?” Nathan sneered.

“You know she’s…” Rachel hesitated and glanced at her mother.

“She’s a good friend to me,” she finished lamely.

She could hardly point out that Edith was a mother figure right in front of her true mother, even though Sandra probably wouldn’t say a word.

“And this is a very large cake—more than the three of you will be able to finish, I’m sure. ”

“So you want me to give a piece of my daughter’s cake to a maid?” Nathan’s eyebrows were so high that it had made his eyes go shockingly wide. The whites showed above and below the black color of them.

“To two maids,” Jennifer bit out, sneering at Rachel. “Tell her no, Father. That’s my cake.”

Rachel drew in a breath and did her best to keep calm. “It would only be a very small piece,” she said. “Just enough for a couple of bites apiece—a little celebration.”

“You don’t need to be celebrating.” Her stepfather turned away from her, tossing his chicken bone, which had now been stripped bare, down onto his plate.

“You have plenty to occupy yourselves, the both of you. If you have so much spare time, why don’t you put it to good use and get that infestation of ants out of the attic? ”

Rachel looked at her mother.

Sandra still hadn’t reacted. She was staring down at the plate in front of her, acting as if she hadn’t heard a word of the conversation.

It left Rachel feeling empty. Gutted.

There had been a time when her mother would have stood up for her.

She would have taken Rachel’s side, told Nathan to give her some cake, and if he had still said no, she would have insisted on sharing her own piece with Rachel.

But that wasn’t the way things were anymore.

Sometime over the years since she had married Nathan, Sandra had disappeared into herself. She had lost the ability to speak up.

Rachel was on her own.

She let herself back out into the hall and found Edith waiting for her.

The older woman, in her mid-forties, short, and slightly plump, wore the same brown apron Rachel did.

Unlike Rachel, her soft gray hair had not escaped its bun.

Also unlike Rachel, she was paid a wage for her services in the house.

Now she wiped her hands on her apron and fixed Rachel with her warm brown eyes. “I heard raised voices,” she said. “Was there some sort of dust-up?”

Rachel felt heat rise to her cheeks. “I asked for a piece of cake,” she admitted.

“Oh, Rachel, you didn’t.”

“We baked that cake,” Rachel said fiercely, keeping her voice low. “We ought to be allowed to eat a piece.”

“Honey, you know that isn’t how it works, though.

” Edith put her arm around Rachel. “I know why it troubles you. This is your family. They ought to treat you as one of them, and not like you’re a hired hand.

But to that man in there, you’re nothing more than a maid, just like me.

You can’t be asking him for cake. Suppose I make you some cake later? ”

“No, Edith,” Rachel said, stepping out of Edith’s embrace.

She couldn’t possibly tell her friend that the purpose of her request had been to celebrate Edith’s birthday.

“I was being foolish. You’re right. But it would be more foolish still to take ingredients from the pantry to make a cake for ourselves. We can’t do that.”

“You’re right,” Edith chuckled. “But I do have some things of my own. I’ve used some of my savings to buy some flour and sugar. Just a little bit, but we could make a small cake and enjoy it together. What do you say? Later tonight, when the family is all in bed?”

Rachel hesitated. “Are you sure? I don’t want to use up your flour and sugar.”

“Honey, there’s no point in having those things if you don’t have someone to share them with.”

“Rachel!” Jennifer’s sharp voice rang out. “We’re ready for our cake! Get back in here!”

Edith held her at arm’s length and gave her a sad smile. “You’d better go,” she said softly. “I’ll see you later tonight.”

Rachel nodded, sighed, and went back into the kitchen.

***

Three hours later, after the rest of the family had gone to sleep, Rachel and Edith sat at the same table where Jennifer had celebrated her birthday.