Faith sat at the small desk in her room at Addy’s and stared at the paper in her hands. Why had her father left her so little information? Did he know more?

Of course, she had no way to ask him. All of her letters had been returned to her, and no matter how many times she called the prison, they wouldn’t help her. He’d phased her out of his life.

She had searched the Internet, visited the January Cove library and looked at every face in town just trying to see if anyone looked like her. Nothing seemed to add up.

But her visit to January Cove hadn’t been in vain. After all, she’d met a great friend in Brandon, and she was starting to get a lot closer to Addy and Olivia. She loved her new “job” of volunteering too. Life was definitely better when no one knew her past. Well, except Brandon.

Brandon was the least judgmental person she’d ever met. He had nothing but acceptance for everyone, and she wanted to be more like him. And the truth was, she was very attracted to him. The thought scared her. The last time she trusted men, she got dumped by one and abandoned by another.

“Knock knock,” Addy said from the cracked doorway.

“Oh, hey, Addy,” Faith said, sliding the piece of paper under her desk calendar.

“I was wondering if you were busy today?”

“Nope, not at all. Did you need some help around here?”

Addy laughed. “No. I wanted to invite you to our big Sunday family dinner.”

“Family dinner?”

“All of the Parkers get together on Sundays and eat a big meal together at my Mom’s house. She’s traveling with her husband, but all of my brothers and their families will be there.”

“I’d hate to intrude.”

“Honey, I wouldn’t invite you if it was an intrusion! Look, we’re a very laid back, welcoming bunch. I regularly invite my guests to come.”

“Oh. Well, okay then. I’d love to!”

“Great. We’ll be leaving around noon, so you can just meet us in the foyer.”

Faith nodded as Addy closed the door behind her. She was nervous about meeting more new people and possibly getting asked questions she didn’t want to answer.

* * *

“And this is my brother Jackson. I think you know Rebecca already?” Addy asked as she continued introducing Faith to her large family.

“I do. She makes a mean mocha latte,” Faith said with a smile.

So far, it wasn’t so bad. Her mind had led her to believe that people were going to bombard her with a million questions the moment she walked through the door of the Parker home, but nothing could’ve been further from the truth. Instead, she had been greeted with smiles and hugs and the smell of pot roast.

A part of her longed for the camaraderie of siblings and a big family. The warmth of this oversized family unit was something she wanted for herself. She’d grown up wealthy, but lonely, and she would’ve traded all the nannies and sports cars in the world for this. The feeling that someone had her back no matter what. The embrace of people who loved her and would never let her down.

“So Addy tells me you’re volunteering with Olivia Lane?” Jackson said.

“Yes. I just started.”

“Olivia’s a great lady. We went to high school together, actually.”

“Really?”

“She had a bit of a rough upbringing, but she’s definitely using that to the advantage of kids all over this area.”

Faith listened as he went on about the work HOPE was doing in the community, but in the back of her mind she had to wonder about the rough upbringing comment. Olivia hadn’t really talked about her early years, of course why would she? Faith was a virtual stranger.

“Sorry I’m late!” she heard a voice call from the foyer. She turned around to see Brandon hugging Addy in the doorway of the kitchen.

“Brandon?”

“Oh, hey, Faith! I see Addy has wrangled you into a Parker family dinner, huh?”

She was actually happy to see a familiar face. “Didn’t take much wrangling, actually. Kind of getting tired of eating alone in my room,” Faith said.

“Now, I always invite you down for every meal, Faith McLemore,” Addy chided.

“I know, I know. I just hate to have you dirty up the kitchen for just me.”

Addy forced a frown. “Business has been a bit slow, but the busy season is almost upon us!”

The rest of the afternoon was spent laughing and talking around the big dining room table, extra chairs spilling out from the edges. Faith couldn’t remember a time where she felt more included and at peace. No one was judging her, at least that she could tell. They seemed to want to know her, not her past.

The relationships she saw around her gave her hope that one day she’d find someone who loved her for her. Only right now, she didn’t really know who she was. Or where she came from.

“Thanks again, everyone. Lunch was amazing,” Faith said as she made her way to the door. Addy had asked her if she wanted a ride back to the inn, but Faith had said she was going to take a nice walk along the beach first.

“Mind if I tag along?” Brandon whispered in her ear at the door. The warmth of his breath on her neck gave her shivers.

“Sure.”

They made their way down through the path leading to the beach. It was starting to get cool as the evening air descended and the wind coming off the water blew her carefully styled hair all over the place. Faith pulled her cardigan tighter around her.

“So what’d you think?”

“About what? The Parker family?”

“Yes. Our resident royal family, so to speak,” Brandon said with a laugh.

“They’re fantastic. I wish…”

“You wish what?”

“That I had a family like that,” she said as she stared back up at the towering brick house off in the distance.

“Everyone does. The Parker family is a dying breed.”

“Well, that sounds morbid, Brandon.”

“No, I just mean family sizes are getting smaller, and people don’t stay together like they have. They’ve all come back to January Cove over the years, for different reasons, but they stay together by choice.”

“I can’t even get my father to talk to me, so I don’t think I have much hope of having a family like that.”

Brandon stopped and stared out toward the water as the sky began to turn pink in preparation for the impending sunset. “You see that out there?”

“What? The horizon?” Faith asked.

“Yeah. A lot of times I look at that and it reminds me that life, and all the possibilities that it brings, is limitless. You never know what’s going to happen, Faith. You create what you want in this world.” He turned back to her. “If you want that kind of family, you have to make it yourself.”

“I don’t even have a boyfriend, Brandon,” she said with a laugh.

“Then maybe you should start there,” he said with a wink. She had no idea what that meant, and she was far too scared to ask so she started walking again instead.

“I can’t believe this place is real.”

“What?”

“It’s like January Cove is trapped in some time warp where people love each other and welcome strangers and the views are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

“Tell me about it,” Brandon said under his breath. She turned to notice him looking at her, and her face flushed. Brandon cleared his throat. “So, do you like dolphins?”

“What?”

He cleared his throat again. “Do you like dolphins?”

“I think so… Why?”

“My friend runs a dolphin cruise company. I thought maybe you’d like to go on a tour sometime? See some dolphins?”

She smiled. “I’d like that.”

Brandon smiled back. “Me too.”

* * *

Faith sat at the small cafeteria table, her foot nervously tapping the floor.

“Faith?” Olivia said.

“Yes?”

“You know how they say dogs can smell fear?” she asked as she sat down in front of her.

“Yes.”

“These kids are going to smell you from a mile away, sweetie.”

“They are?”

“Or maybe they might get seasick first,” she said, pointing at Faith’s leg.

“Sorry,” Faith said sighing. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this, Liv. Maybe I could just work more behind the scenes.”

Olivia reached out and took both of Faith’s hands in hers. “You’re a human being. These kids are no different than you are. They need to hear positive words. They need a smile and maybe a hug. Trust me, when they see HOPE volunteers here to eat lunch with them, they feel so important!”

Today was a big day for Faith. Once a month, some of the volunteers went to one of the local schools to have lunch with the HOPE kids. They didn’t wear their normal T-shirts because Olivia said the kids might get bullied for needing free lunches. Instead, they were just there to encourage the kids and let them know someone cares. And this was the first time Faith would be eating with one of the kids by herself.

“They’re going to love you, Faith. Just be yourself.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Faith whispered under her breath as Olivia stood to greet the kids who were milling into the cafeteria.

Faith stood and painted on a smile. “Faith, this is Amelia.”

The little girl looked to be about nine or ten years old. She was wearing a plain pink shirt with a couple of small holes near the bottom and a pair of ratty blue jeans. Her hair was pulled into a matted ponytail. Faith wasn’t ready for this.

“Hi, Amelia. I’m Faith.”

“Yeah, I know. She just said that,” the little girl said as she sat down. Olivia glanced at Faith and smiled.

“It’s okay,” she mouthed quietly. “Amelia, Miss Faith is going to have lunch with you today. Would that be alright?”

“I guess,” Amelia said, shrugging her shoulders.

Faith slowly sat down across from the little girl. She noticed no one else was coming to their table.

“Aren’t your friends going to sit with us too?” Faith finally asked as she opened her own bagged lunch.

“I don’t have any friends,” Amelia said nonchalantly as she pulled her sandwich from the bag provided by HOPE. The bag lunches were a special occurrence as most kids just ate lunch provided by the school.

Faith pushed the straw through her juice box. “Oh, certainly that can’t be true. I bet you have at least a few friends.”

Amelia took a bite out of her sandwich like a ravenous animal and stared at Faith. “Nobody here talks to me.”

“Nobody?”

“They make fun of me.”

Faith looked at her and couldn’t imagine the other kids making fun of such a beautiful little girl who couldn’t help the situation she was in. “Why do they make fun of you?”

“Because we’re poor.” She continued to eat, no real emotion showing on her face. For Amelia, this was all the life she had known so far. It made Faith’s stomach knot up.

“You know what?”

“What?”

“When I was a kid, I got bullied too.”

That caught Amelia’s attention. She opened her bag of chips and shoved a few in her mouth. “Why’d you get bullied?”

“Well, I had this big gap in my teeth. Right here,” Faith said, pointing to where it had been before Dr. Gilmore had fixed it when she was in eighth grade.

“Where’d it go?”

“The dentist fixed it for me,” Faith said.

“Dentist? Your parents must have been rich.”

Faith felt completely inadequate in that moment. She couldn’t compare her situation to Amelia’s. She was a fraud.

“Would you like the rest of my sandwich?” Faith asked after a few moments.

Amelia reached for it without answering and gobbled down the half Faith hadn’t eaten. Her appetite had disappeared the more she realized how bad some of these kids had it. How could she have been so blind all these years?

When lunch was over, Faith told Amelia goodbye and watched her walk down the hall alone. It made her heart ache.

She rode back to the office with Olivia, the car ride quiet as she thought about all she’d experienced. When they finished unloading the car, Olivia called her into the small break room.

“You okay, hon?”

“Not really. That was a lot to take in.”

“That little Amelia is something else, huh? She’s a spitfire for sure.”

“It’s so sad. She said no one talks to her and some kids bully her for being poor.”

Olivia nodded sadly. “That’s true. We’ve been working with the counselors at the school to see if we can help. But it’s hard because of her family situation.”

“What do you mean?”

“Amelia was abandoned by her father as a baby. Her mother has a severe drug addiction, and they live either in her beat up car or at the homeless shelter when there’s room. Her mother keeps failing drug screenings, so they get kicked out of the shelter a lot.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“It’s very sad. There’s talk that Child Protective Services is about to remove Amelia from her mother’s care yet again, but she has no family so she’ll be placed in foster care. It’s happened a couple of times already.”

Faith’s heart sank. That poor little girl deserved a great life, and she definitely wasn’t getting a fair shake. “Can I visit with her more often?”

Olivia smiled. “Of course!”

“Something about her just broke my heart,” Faith said, still shaken by the short lunch visit with Amelia.

“She reminds me a lot of myself,” Olivia said offhandedly.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I had a very similar upbringing. My mother left me with my father when I was two years old. He was a raging, abusive alcoholic. I wanted to live with my aunt, but she got sick with cancer and couldn’t take me. I ended up running away when I was thirteen, but got picked up by the police over near Savannah. They placed me with three foster families over the years, but nobody could tame me. I was a wild child, for sure. I eventually aged out of foster care.”

“Wow. It’s amazing you are doing so well in your life now.”

“I owe a lot of that to January Cove. My last foster family lived on the edge of town. They were horrible people, unfortunately, but being here allowed me to go to January Cove High School. When I started school here, I was a mess. Still running away, but those teachers and the friends I met here were my saving grace.”

“So that’s why you started HOPE?”

“Yes. I know firsthand what it’s like to feel unwanted and invisible. Giving back helps me. Every time I help a kid, it chips away at the hurts I have from my own past.”

“But look at you now. Married and happy and running this wonderful charity. Do you and your husband have kids?”

Olivia smiled sadly. “No. We tried for years, but it wasn’t in the cards for us.”

“There’s still time,” Faith said, trying to encourage her.

“Actually, no there’s not. I had to have a hysterectomy when I was thirty-two. But it’s okay. I think of these kids as my own. God always has a plan.”

Faith was astounded at her… well, faith. She was almost embarrassed to think she had any real problems compared to what she was seeing. Her eyes were finally wide open, and as mad as she was at her father, she knew nothing about true tough times.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, sweetie, it’s fine. I’ve had eight years to grieve that loss, and I’m okay. Really.”

“Wait. Eight years? You’re forty years old?”

Olivia laughed. “Yes… Actually, almost forty-one.”

“Oh wow. You don’t look a day over thirty-five.”

“Thanks. Probably because I don’t have kids!” she said with a laugh. Faith couldn’t help but chuckle at that too. “Come on, we have work to do.”